bsence.

Mrs. Toomey was returning from the ash can when she saw Mormon Joe
going into his shack on the diagonal corner. She slackened her trot to a
walk and watched while he unlocked the door, as though to read from his
back something of his intentions in regard to the loan Kate had promised
so confidently.

It had seemed too good to be realized, so she had not told Jap of their
meeting. She must not count on it, however--she had been disappointed so
often that she dreaded the feeling. Ugh! What frightful cold! Mrs.
Toomey ran into the house and forgot the incident.

Later in the afternoon Toomey came home in high spirits.

"They got in!" he announced. "I hardly thought they'd start, such
weather. It's twenty-five below now and getting colder."

"Who?" inquired Mrs. Toomey, absently.

"The show people."

"Oh, did they?"

"Might as well take it in, mightn't we?" in feigned indifference.

"How can we? It's a dollar a ticket, isn't it?"

For answer he produced two strips of pink pasteboard from his waistcoat
pocket.

"Jap?" wonderingly.

"Yes'm."

"Where did you get the money?"

"I raised it."

"But how?"

He hesitated, looking sheepish.

"On the range."

Mrs. Toomey sat down weakly.

"The cook stove! You mortgaged it?"

"I had to give some security, hadn't I?" he demanded with asperity.

"Who to?"

"Teeters. I got five dollars."

Mrs. Toomey found it convenient to go into the pantry until she had
regained control of her feelings.

It was twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House
were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned
Swiss Bell Ringers and Yodlers.

The weather proved to be no deterrent to a community hungry for
entertainment, and they swarmed from all directions, bundled to
shapelessness, like Esquimaux headed for a central igloo. Infants in
arms and the bedridden in wheel chairs, helped to fill the Opera House
to its capacity, emptying the streets and houses for a time as
completely as an exodus.

While the best people, among whom were the Toomeys, occupied the several
rows of reserved chairs and smiled tolerantly upon the efforts of the
performers, and the proletariat stamped and whistled through its teeth
and cracked peanuts, a man muffled to the ears by the high collar of a
mackinaw coat, his face further concealed by the visor of a cap and
ear-laps, rode to the top of the bench, drew rein and looked down upon
the lights o