you would have ridden to your wedding with a hundred men behind
you, as rich as a princess."

Hetty, sitting, jaded and bespattered, on the limping horse, flashed a
swift glance at him, and smiled out of slightly misty eyes.

"It happened," she said, "that I was particular, or fanciful, and there
was only one man--the one that would take me without a dollar, in borrowed
clothes--who seemed good enough for me."

They rode on past a stockyard, and into a rutted street of bare frame
houses, and Hetty was glad they scarcely met anybody. Then, Larry helped
her down, and, thrusting a wallet into her hands, knocked at the door of a
house beside a store. The man who opened it stared at them, and when Larry
had drawn him aside called his wife. She took Hetty's chilled hand in both
her own, and the storekeeper smiled at Larry.

"You come right along and put some of my things on," he said. "Then, you
are going with me to have breakfast at the hotel, and talk to the judge. I
guess the women aren't going to have any use for us."

It was some time later when they came back to the store, and for just a
minute Grant saw Hetty alone. She was dressed very plainly in new
garments, and blushed when he looked gravely down on her.

"That dress is not good enough for you," he said. "It is very different
from what you have been accustomed to."

Hetty glanced at him shyly. "You will have very few dollars to spare,
Larry, until the trouble's through," she said, "and you will be my husband
in an hour or two."

XXX

LARRY'S WEDDING DAY

Hetty was married in haste, without benefit of clergy, while several men,
with resolute faces, kept watch outside the judge's door, and two who were
mounted sat gazing across the prairie on a rise outside the town. After
the declarations were made and signed, the judge turned to Hetty, who
stood smiling bravely, though her eyes were a trifle misty, by Larry's
side.

"Now I have something to tell your husband, Mrs. Grant," he said. "You
will have to spare him for about five minutes."

Hetty's lips quivered, for she recognized the gravity of his tone, and it
was not astonishing that for a moment or two she turned her face aside.
She had endeavoured to look forward hopefully and banish regrets; but the
prosaic sordidness of the little dusty office, and the absence of anything
that might have imparted significance or dignity to the hurried ceremony,
had not been without their effect. She had seen