ecause I couldn't convince men
I was in earnest until I made good in some hard way," he complained
once to Whispering Smith. "I never could acquire even a successful
habit of swearing, so I had to learn to fight."

When, one day in Boney Street in Medicine Bend, he threw open the door
of Marion Sinclair's shop, flung his hat sailing along the showcase
with his war-cry, and called to her in the back rooms, she thought he
had merely run in to say he was in town.

"How do you do? What do you think? You're going to have an old boarder
back," he cried. "I'm coming to Medicine Bend, superintendent of the
division!"

"Mr. McCloud!" Marion Sinclair clasped her hands and dropped into a
chair. "Have they made you superintendent already?"

"Well, I like that! Do you want them to wait till I'm gray-headed?"

Marion threw her hands to her own head. "Oh, don't say anything
about gray hairs. My head won't bear inspection. But I can't get over
this promotion coming so soon--this whole big division! Well, I
congratulate you very sincerely----"

"Oh, but that isn't it! I suppose anybody will congratulate me. But
where am I to board? Have you a cook? You know how I went from bad to
worse after you left Cold Springs. May I have my meals here with you
as I used to there?"

"Why, I suppose you can, yes, if you can stand the cooking. I have an
apprentice, Mr. Dancing's daughter, who does pretty well. She lives
here with me, and is learning the business. But I sha'n't take as much
as you used to pay me, for I'm doing so much better down here."

"Let me run that end of it, will you? I shall be doing better down
here myself."

They laughed as they bantered. Marion Sinclair wore gold spectacles,
but they did not hide the delightful good-nature in her eyes. On the
third finger of her slender left hand she wore, too, a gold band that
explained the gray in her hair at twenty-six.

This was the wife of Murray Sinclair, whom he had brought to the
mountains from her far-away Wisconsin home. Within a year he had
broken her heart so far as it lay in him to do it, but he could not
break her charm nor her spirit. She was too proud to go back, when
forced to leave him, and had set about earning her own living in the
country to which she had come as a bride. She put on spectacles, she
mutilated her heavy brown hair and to escape notice and secure the
obscurity that she craved, her name, Marion, became, over the door of
her millinery shop and in