liness most favorably with the male butterflies of society that
hovered around her. What one of them was so essentially chivalrous as
the Western man; so modest, so self-sacrificing, so brave and resolute
and resourceful? Dick Lane, or Jack Payson, for that matter, in all
save the adventitious points of education and culture was the higher
type of manhood, and Jack, at least, if not poor Dick, could hold his
own in mental and artistic perception with the brightest, most cultured
of Harvard graduates.

At the end of the year she came back home to await Dick's return from
the wilds of Mexico. There was great anxiety about his safety, for
Geronimo, attacked by Crook in the Apache stronghold of the Tonto
Basin, had escaped to the mountains of northwestern Mexico with his
band of fierce Chiricahuas.

Now Dick Lane had not been heard from in this region. When he neither
made appearance nor sent a message upon the day appointed for his
return, his brother, Bud, was for setting out instantly to find him and
rescue him if he were in difficulties.

Then it was that Echo Allen discovered the true nature of her affection
for her lover, that it was sisterly regard, differing only in degree,
but not in kind, from that which she felt for his brother. She joined
with Polly in opposing Bud's going, urging his recklessness as a
reason. "You are certain to be killed," she said, "and I cannot lose
you both." Jack Payson, for whom Bud was working, then came forward
and offered to accompany him, and keep him with bounds. Again there
was a revelation of her heart Echo, and one that terrified her with a
sense of disloyalty. It was Jack she really loved, noble, chivalric,
wonderful Jack Payson, whom, with a Southern intensity of feeling, she
had unconsciously come to regard as her standard of all that makes for
manhood. Plausible objections could not be urged against his
sacrificing himself for his friend. With an irresistible impulse she
cast herself upon his breast and said: "I cannot BEAR to see you go."

Payson gently disengaged her arms.

"I must, Echo. It is what Dick would do for me if I were in his place."

However, while Payson and Bud were preparing for their departure, Buck
McKee appeared in the region and reported that Dick Lane had been
killed by the Apaches. He told with convincing details of how he had
met Lane as each was returning from a successful prospecting trip in
the Ghost Range, and how they had sunk th