glad I'll be! I wonder if he has changed."

As Madeline sat waiting in the yellow gloom she heard the faint,
intermittent click of the telegraph instrument, the low hum of wires,
the occasional stamp of an iron-shod hoof, and a distant vacant laugh
rising above the sounds of the dance. These commonplace things were
new to her. She became conscious of a slight quickening of her pulse.
Madeline had only a limited knowledge of the West. Like all of her
class, she had traveled Europe and had neglected America. A few letters
from her brother had confused her already vague ideas of plains and
mountains, as well as of cowboys and cattle. She had been astounded
at the interminable distance she had traveled, and if there had been
anything attractive to look at in all that journey she had passed it in
the night. And here she sat in a dingy little station, with telegraph
wires moaning a lonely song in the wind.

A faint sound like the rattling of thin chains diverted Madeline's
attention. At first she imagined it was made by the telegraph wires.
Then she heard a step. The door swung wide; a tall man entered, and with
him came the clinking rattle. She realized then that the sound came from
his spurs. The man was a cowboy, and his entrance recalled vividly to
her that of Dustin Farnum in the first act of "The Virginian."

"Will you please direct me to a hotel?" asked Madeline, rising.

The cowboy removed his sombrero, and the sweep he made with it and the
accompanying bow, despite their exaggeration, had a kind of rude grace.
He took two long strides toward her.

"Lady, are you married?"

In the past Miss Hammond's sense of humor had often helped her to
overlook critical exactions natural to her breeding. She kept silence,
and she imagined it was just as well that her veil hid her face at the
moment. She had been prepared to find cowboys rather striking, and she
had been warned not to laugh at them.

This gentleman of the range deliberately reached down and took up her
left hand. Before she recovered from her start of amaze he had stripped
off her glove.

"Fine spark, but no wedding-ring," he drawled. "Lady, I'm glad to see
you're not married."

He released her hand and returned the glove.

"You see, the only ho-tel in this here town is against boarding married
women."

"Indeed?" said Madeline, trying to adjust her wits to the situation.

"It sure is," he went on. "Bad business for ho-tels to have married
women. Keeps