child's:

"We'll have to be friends; Uncle Tim says you're a white man, and that's
more than some he brings over the road these days are."

"Yes, I hope so. You are Mr. Gilsey's nieces I am glad to meet you"

The young woman burst out laughing.

"Lor', _no_. I ain't anybody's niece; but he's my uncle--I've adopted
_him_. I'm Terpy--Terpsichore, run Terpsichore's Hall," she said by way
of explanation, as if she thought he might not understand her allusion.

Keith's breath was almost taken away. Why, she was not at all like the
picture he had formed of her. She was a neat, quiet-looking young woman,
with a fine figure, slim and straight and supple, a melodious voice, and
laughing gray eyes.

"You must come and see me. We're to have a blow-out to-night. Come
around. I'll introduce you to the boys. I've got the finest ball-room in
town--just finished--and three fiddles. We christen it to-night. Goin'
to be the biggest thing ever was in Gumbolt."

Keith awoke from his daze.

"Thank you, but I am afraid I'll have to ask you to excuse me," he said.

"Why?" she inquired simply.

"Because I can't come. I am not much of a dancer."

She looked at him first with surprise and then with amusement.

"Are you a Methodist preacher?"

"No."

"Salvation?"

"No."

"I thought, maybe, you were like Tib Drummond, the Methodist, what's
always a-preachin' ag'in' me." She turned to the storekeeper. "What do
you think he says? He says he won't come and see me, and he ain't a
preacher nor Salvation Army neither. But he will, won't he?"

"You bet," said the man, peeping up with a grin from behind a barrel.
"If he don't, he'll be about the only one in town who don't."

"No," said Keith, pleasantly, but firmly. "I can't go."

"Oh, yes, you will," she laughed. "I'll expect you. By-by"; and she
walked out of the store with a jaunty air, humming a song about the
"iligint, bauld McIntyres."

The "blow-out" came off, and was honored with a column in the next issue
of the Whistle--a column of reeking eulogy. But Keith did not attend,
though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the shouting and stamping of
Terpsichore's guests deep into the night.

Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking about him
for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as possible to think
of anything else.

If, however, he forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she
did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign