?"

Mammy Laura evidently took his appearance and demand in no good part.
She began to sputter, but his heavy voice rode over hers and quenched it:

"Keep still, ol' woman! I want to see your betters. Whar's my Jane
Ann?"

"Lawsy massy! what kine ob a man is yo'?" squealed the fat old colored
woman. "T' come combustucatin' inter a pusson's kitchen in disher
way----"

"Be still, ol' woman!" roared the visitor again. "Whar's my Jane
Ann?"

The butler appeared then and took the strange visitor in hand.

"Come this way, sir. Miss Kate will see you," he said, and led the big
man into the front of the house.

"I don't want none o' your 'Miss Kates,'" growled the stranger.
"I want my Jane Ann."

Heavy's little Aunt looked very dainty indeed when she appeared before
this gigantic Westerner. The moment he saw her, off came his big hat,
displaying a red, freckled face, and a head as bald as an egg. He was a
very ugly man, saving when he smiled; then innumerable humorous wrinkles
appeared about his eyes and the pale blue eyes themselves twinkled
confidingly.

"Your sarvent, ma'am," he said. "Your name Stone?"

"It is, sir. I presume you are 'W. Hicks'?" she said.

"That's me--Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, Montanny."

"I hope you have not come here, Mr. Hicks, to be disappointed. But I
must tell you at the start," said Miss Kate, "that I never heard of
you before _I_ received your very remarkable telegram."

"Huh! that can well be, ma'am--that can well be. But they got your
letter at the ranch, and Jib, he took it into Colonel Penhampton, and the
Colonel telegraphed me to New York, where I'd come a-hunting her----"

"Wait, wait, wait!" cried Miss Kate, eagerly. "I don't understand
at all what you are talking about."

"Why--why, I'm aimin' to talk about my Jane Ann," exclaimed the
cattle man.

"Jane Ann who?" she gasped.

"Jane Ann Hicks. My little gal what you've got her and what you wrote
about----"

"You are misinformed, sir," declared Miss Kate. "I have never written
to you--or to anybody else--about any person named Jane Ann Hicks."

"Oh, mebbe you don't know her by that name. She had some hifalutin'
idee before she vamoosed about not likin' her name--an' I give her that
thar name myself!" added Bill Hicks, in an aggrieved tone.

"Nor have I written about any other little girl, or by any other name,"
rejoined Miss Kate. "I have written no letter at all."

"You didn't write to Silver Ranch to t