h your eyes shut."

Lester went away with renewed determination to pack his belongings and
bolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to go
without some sort of explanation to her.

The other hands, who called him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were more
and more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved
Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds
"after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring
rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank
courtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. He
was a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not have
uttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "the
States," but to give way to an English adventurer whose way was paid by
his brother was a different case altogether.

Of George Adelbert's real feeling the boys, of course, knew nothing. Had
they known of his hidden contempt for them they would probably have
taken him out of the country at the end of a rope, but of his position
with Fan they were in no doubt, for she was very frank with them. If
they accused her of being "sweet on the bloody Englishman" she laughed.
If they threatened his life in a jocular way she laughed again, but in a
different way, and said: "Don't make a mistake; George Adelbert is a
fighter from way back East." And once, in a burst of rage, she said: "I
won't have you saying such things, Lincoln Compton. I won't have it, I
tell you!" No one could accuse her of disloyalty or cowardice.

In his letters home Lester had put his fiancee's best foot forward.
"She's quite too good for me," he wrote to his brother. "She's young and
beautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole family
can muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all that
sort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put all
this down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement from
his brother. He got it by return mail.

Edward was suavely congratulatory, and in closing said: "I'm deucedly
glad you're off my hands just now, my boy, for I'm confoundedly hard up.
You're doing the sensible thing--only don't try to bring your family
home--not at present."

Lester was thrown into despairing fury by this letter, which not only
cut him off from his remittances, but politely shut the paternal door in
his own face as well