ord's son, a lad of twelve, had been
busy staring at the stranger ever since he entered the room. He ran
away, but as he ran could not restrain himself from flinging one or two
glances back over his shoulder.

"Don't you smoke, either?" said the stranger to Robbins, his hand to his
breast pocket.

"Only a pipe," answered Robbins. He wished that he didn't feel an
absurd, morbid sympathy for the poor fool's pluck sneaking into his
consciousness.

"What are we waiting for?" The captain whispered it to a mild-eyed,
short-bearded man next him; but the captain's whisper carried far. "Aw,
give him rope!" suggested the mild-eyed man; "maybe he ain't so sandy's
he seems."

Not seeming to recognize any chill in his reception, the young stranger
approached the stove. No one moved to admit him to the inner circle;
this, also, he did not seem to observe. "This whole country looks as if
you had been having hard times," he continued. His voice had full, rich,
magnetic notes, but its unfamiliar intonations jarred on his hearers;
they knew them to belong to the East, and they hated the East. "It's
pretty sad to ride through miles and miles of farming country and see
the burned fence-posts that caught fire from the cinders, just lying
where they fell, and the smoke not coming out of one farm-house chimney
in six. It looks as if the farmers out this way had simply given up the
fight."

"You've hit it," said the mild-eyed man; "they have. Some of them have
moved away and some of them have killed themselves, after they've lost
their stock on chattel mortgages and lost their land to the improvement
company. There ought to be lots of ghosts on those abandoned farms and
in those houses where the fences are down. This country is full of
ghosts. We ain't much better than ghosts ourselves."

"It was the three dry years, I suppose."

"That and the mortgage sharks and the Shylocks from the East," old
Captain Sparks interrupted in a venomous tone; "what pickings the
drought left they got."

"Pretty rough!" said the stranger, declining the combat again. "There's
one man I want to meet here; his name is Russell--Doctor Russell."

The mild-eyed man explained that his name was Russell; the other men
looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's his little game?" whispered the
captain. "It won't go, whatever it is," said the man next him. Robbins
heard question and answer distinctly; but the young fellow near him did
not wince. "Are you the one that