heard his pleasant voice plainly and
saw his face with great distinctness as revealed by the brakeman's
light. While she recalled his features individually--his eyes, his
mouth, his chin, and the meaning they conveyed, his manner with its
mixture of friendliness and reserve, she mechanically rubbed her
forehead with her finger tips as though the action might assist in
catching some elusive memory that was just beyond her reach. Her brows
knit in perplexity and she murmured finally:

"He didn't seem a stranger, somehow--and yet--he was, of course. It
would not be possible for me ever to forget a man like that. It seemed
as if--" there was bewilderment in her face as she laid her hand upon
her heart--"as if, somehow, I knew him here."

Kate's belief that no better sheep of their class than hers would be
found in the stockyards was justified by subsequent events. Her shipment
not only "topped the market," but she received for her yearling lambs
fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents a head--the highest paid since the
Civil War. This high rate was due not only to European disturbances, but
to the quality and condition of the sheep; and, therefore, apart from
the attention which she naturally would have attracted, she was, as the
owner, an object of interest in the yards as well as in the stock
exchange offices and the bank.

Basking in the reflected sunshine of his employer's success, Bowers came
as near strutting as was possible for one of his retiring temperament.

Kate was finding a new experience in her meeting with the members of the
firm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom her
business brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. These
prosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, were
an unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, their
eagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown up
and lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when the
tears were absurdly close to her eyes.

Aside from the circumstances which in any event would have attracted
more than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition and
the courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity and
good sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioning
friendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way unusual, made her
an instantaneous and complete success with those she met the following
day, and a celebr