te creature whom a few moments had taken worlds distant from him.

Suddenly tiring of her diversion, she dropped his hand. "You don't say
I do it well," she charged, aware suspiciously, at last, of his grave
silence.

"You do it very well indeed. I didn't think you had it in you, kid.
What's worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure enough
gipsy as you."

"All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too
familiar with me. You can do that, can't you?"

"You bet I can," he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.

"And look handsome," she teased.

"Oh, that will be easy for me--since you are going to make me up. As a
simple child of nature I'm no ornament to the scenery, but art's a heap
improving sometimes."

She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before it
could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the plains. It was
not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes that could say so many
things in a minute, but the gallant ease of his bearing. Such a springy
lightness, such sinewy grace of undulating muscle, were rare even on
the frontier. She had once heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he could
whip his weight in wildcats, and it was easy of belief after seeing how
surely he was master of the dynamic power in him. It is the emergency
that sifts men, and she had seen him rise to several with a readiness
that showed the stuff in him.

That evening they slipped out unobserved in the dusk, and a few minutes
later a young gipsy and his bride presented themselves at the inn to be
put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he
spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of
the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first
two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must
connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he
would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to
turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations in the
house. This being satisfactorily arranged, the young gipsies were left
to themselves in the room they had rented.

The first thing that the man did when they were alone was to roll a
cigarette, which operation he finished deftly with one hand, while the
other swept a match in a circular motion along his trousers leg. In very
fair English the Spanish gipsy said: "You ce'tainly ought to learn to
smo