sir."

"Is this the lad with the injured arm?" asked the gentleman meeting the
pair, and glancing toward Jim's bandaged arm, with the coat sleeve
hanging loose above it.

"Yes, sir, but it's nothing. It doesn't need any attention," said Jim,
ungraciously.

"Behave yourself, Jim. Yes, Doctor--I suppose you're that?--he is so
badly hurt that he's cross. But it's wonderful to find a doctor away up
here," said Dorothy. Her odd little air of authority over the great,
loutish lad, and her gay smile to himself, instantly won the stranger's
liking, and he answered warmly:

"Wonderful, maybe, but no more so than all of Dan Ford's doings. Step
this way, my son, and Miss, I fancy you'd best not follow just yet.
Nurse Melton will assist me, if I need assistance."

"A nurse, too? How odd!" said Dorothy turning to join her mates.

She did not see Jim Barlow again that night. When the examination was
made the doctor found the injured arm in bad shape, swollen and inflamed
to a degree that made great care a necessity unless much worse were to
follow.

So, for the first time in his healthy life, Jim found himself an
invalid; sent to bed and ministered to by a frail, sweet-faced woman in
a white uniform, whose presence on that far away ranch was a puzzle to
him. Until, seeing his evident curiosity, she satisfied it by the
explanation:

"Oh! I'm merely another of Mr. Ford's beneficiaries. My brother is an
engineer on one of his railroads, and he heard that I was threatened
with consumption. So he had me sent to Denver for a time, till San Leon
was ready. Then I came here. I'm on hand to attend any sick folks who
may need me, though you're the first patient yet. I can tell you that
you're fortunate to number Daniel Ford among your friends. He's the
grandest man in the world."

Jim lay quiet for a time, till his supper was brought in. But he could
not taste that. The dressing of his wounded arm had been painful in
extreme, though he had borne the pain without a groan, and for that been
greatly admired by both the surgeon and the nurse. He was now feverish
and discontented. The "happy summer" of which Dorothy had boasted was
beginning anything but happily for him. He was angry against his own
weakness and disappointed that he could not at once begin his work of
studying the rocks of this region. To do so had been his chief reason
for accepting Mr. Ford's genial invitation, for his shyness shrank from
meeting strangers and accepti