eally. His walls are covered with bookshelves of his
own manufacture, and chairs of his own design. Where the boy got the
skill, I don't see. Heaven knows, his sisters are conventional enough!
He's capable of being Supervisor, but he won't live in town and work in an
office. He's like an Indian in his love of the open."

All this was quite too absorbingly interesting to permit of any study of
the landscape, which went by as if dismissed by the chariot wheels of some
contemptuous magician. Redfield's eyes were mostly on the road (in the
manner of the careful driver), but when he did look up it was to admire
the color and poise of his seat-mate, who made the landscape of small
account.

She kept the conversation to the desired point. "Mr. Cavanagh's work
interests me very much. It seems very important; and it must be new, for I
never heard of a forest ranger when I was a child."

"The forester is new--at least, in America," he answered. "My dear young
lady, you are returned just in the most momentous period in the history of
the West. The old dominion--the cattle-range--is passing. The supremacy of
the cowboy is ended. The cow-boss is raising oats, the cowboy is pitching
alfalfa, and swearing horribly as he blisters his hands. Some of the
rangers at the moment are men of Western training like Ross, but whose
allegiance is now to Uncle Sam. With others that transfer of allegiance is
not quite complete, hence the insolence of men like Gregg, who think they
can bribe or intimidate these forest guards, and so obtain favors; the
newer men are college-bred, real foresters. But you can't know what it all
means till you see Ross, or some other ranger, on his own heath. We'll
make up a little party some day and drop down upon him, and have him show
us about. It's a lonely life, and so the ranger keeps open house. Would
you like to go?"

"Oh, yes indeed! I'm eager to get into the mountains. Every night as I see
the sun go down over them I wonder what the world is like up there."

Then he began very delicately to inquire about her Eastern experience.
There was not much to tell. In a lovely old town not far from
Philadelphia, where her aunt lived, she had spent ten years of happy
exile. "I was horribly lonely and homesick at first," she said. "Mother
wrote only short letters, and my father never wrote at all. I didn't know
he was dead then. He was always good to me. He wasn't a bad man, was he?"

"No," responded Redfield, withou