or us," replied Redfield.

This little dialogue gave the girl time to recover herself, but as
Cavanagh watched the blush fade from her face, leaving it cold and white,
he sympathized with her--pitied her from the bottom of his heart. He
perceived that he was a chance spectator of the first scene in a painful
domestic drama--one that might easily become a tragedy. He wondered what
the forces might be which had brought such a daughter to this sloven, this
virago. To see a maid of this delicate bloom thrust into such a place as
Lize Wetherford's "hotel" had the reputation of being roused indignation.

"When did you reach town?" he asked, and into his voice his admiration
crept.

"Only last night."

"You find great changes here?"

"Not so great as in my mother. It's all----" She stopped abruptly, and he
understood.

Lize being drawn back to her cash-register, Redfield turned to say: "My
dear young lady, I don't suppose you remember me, but I knew you when you
were a tot of five or six. I knew your father very well."

"Did you?" Her face lighted up.

"Yes, poor fellow, he went away from here rather under a cloud, you
know."

"I remember a little of it. I was here when the shooting took place."

"So you were. Well, since then much has happened to us all," he explained
to the ranger. "There wasn't room for a dashing young blood such as Ed
Wetherford was in those days." He turned to Lee. "He was no worse than the
men on the other side--it was dog eat dog; but some way the people rather
settled on him as a scapegoat. He was forced out, and your mother has
borne the brunt of it since. Those were lawless days."

It was a painful subject, and Redfield's voice grew lower and more
hesitant as he went on. Looking at this charming girl through the smoke of
fried ham, with obscene insects buzzing about her fair head, made him feel
for the thousandth time, and more keenly than ever before, the amazing
combinations in American society. How could she be the issue of Edward and
Eliza Wetherford?

More and more Lee Virginia's heart went out in trust toward these two men.
Opposed to the malodorous, unshaven throng which filled the room, they
seemed wondrously softened and sympathetic, and in the ranger's gaze was
something else--something which made her troubles somehow less
intolerable. She felt that he understood the difficult situation in which
she found herself.

Redfield went on. "You find us horribly uncivilized after te