white prairie two thousand miles
away. It was a desolate land of parched grass and bitter lakes with
beaches dusty with alkali, but a rich one to the few who held dominion
over it, and she had received the homage of a princess there. Then she
heard a voice that was quite in keeping with the spirit of the scene, and
was scarcely astonished to see that a man was smiling down on her.

He was dressed in city garments, and they became him; but the hand he held
out was lean, and hard, and brown, and, for he stood bareheaded, a paler
streak showed where the wide hat had shielded a face that had been
darkened by stinging alkali dust from the prairie sun. It was a quietly
forceful face, with steady eyes, which had a little sparkle of pleasure in
them, and were clear and brown, while something in the man's sinewy pose
suggested that he would have been at home in the saddle. Indeed, it was in
the saddle that Hetty Torrance remembered him most vividly, hurling his
half-tamed broncho straight at a gully down which the nondescript pack
streamed, while the scarcely seen shape of a coyote blurred by the dust,
streaked the prairie in front of them.

"Hetty!" he said.

"Larry!" said the girl. "Why, whatever are you doing here?"

Then both laughed a little, perhaps to conceal the faint constraint that
was upon them, for a meeting between former comrades has its difficulties
when one is a man and the other a woman, and the bond between them has not
been defined.

"I came in on business a day or two ago," said the man. "Ran round to
check some packages. I'm going back again to-morrow."

"Well," said the girl, "I was in the city, and came here to meet Flo
Schuyler and her sister. They'll be in at four."

The man looked at his watch. "That gives us 'most fifteen minutes, but
it's not going to be enough. We'll lose none of it. What about the
singing?"

Hetty Torrance flushed a trifle. "Larry," she said, "you are quite sure
you don't know?"

The man appeared embarrassed, and there was a trace of gravity in his
smile. "Your father told me a little; but I haven't seen him so often of
late. Any way, I would sooner you told me."

"Then," said the girl, with the faintest of quivers in her voice, "the
folks who understand good music don't care to hear me."

There was incredulity, which pleased his companion, in the man's face, but
his voice vaguely suggested contentment.

"That is just what they can't do," he said decisively. "You sing