s taken a fresh start." She sighed, "Folks
like you and Betty seem awfully open-hearted. It's living in cities, I
suppose, where every one knows every one else so well."

This astonishing picture of the candid simplicity of New York's social
life absorbed Jasper's attention for some time.

"Wouldn't you like to live in a city, Jane?"

She laughed her short, boyish "Hoo!" "It isn't what I would like, Mr.
Morena," she said. "Why, I'd like to see the world. I would like to be
that fellow who was condemned to wander all over the earth and never
to die. He was a Jew, too, wasn't he?"

Jasper flushed. People were not in the habit of making direct
reference to his nationality, and, being an Israelite who had early
cut himself off with dislike from his own people and cultivated the
society of Gentiles, "a man without a country," he was acutely
sensitive.

"The Wandering Jew? Yes. Where did you ever hear of him?"

"I read his story," she answered absently; "an awful long one, but
interesting, about lots of people, by Eugene Sue."

Jasper's lips fell apart and he stared. She had spoken unwittingly and
he could see that she was not thinking of him, that she was far away,
staring beyond her horse's head into the broad, sunset-brightened
west.

"Where were you schooled?" he asked her.

He had brought her back and her face stiffened. She gave him a
startled, almost angry look, dug her heels into her horse and broke
into a gallop; nor could he win from her another word.

A few days before he left, he took Yarnall into his confidence. At
first the rancher would do nothing but laugh. "Jane on the boards!
That's a notion!" followed by explosion after explosion of mirth. The
Jew waited, patient, pliant, smiling, and then enumerated his reasons.
He talked to Yarnall for an hour, at the end of which time, Yarnall,
his eyes still twinkling, sent for Jane.

The two men sat in a log-walled room, known as the office. Yarnall's
big desk crowded a stove. There was no other furniture except shelves
and a box seat beneath a window. Jasper sat on the end of the desk,
swinging his slim, well-booted leg; Yarnall, stocky, gray, shabby,
weather-beaten, leaned back in his wicker chair. The door which Jasper
faced was directly behind Yarnall. When Jane opened it, he turned.

The girl looked grim and a little pale. She was evidently frightened.
This summons from Yarnall suggested dismissal or reproof. She came
around to face him and stood th