no"—with heavy irony—"he isn't identified with the machine—not at all; he merely owns it and runs it. We may think we can swing a safe majority in the legislature, and the 'antis' may be just as firmly convinced that they can. But before either side can turn a wheel it will have to walk up to the captain's office and get its orders."

"Ah," said Blount, and a little later: "Thank you, Dick, I am pretty badly out of touch with the Western political situation, as you've discovered." Then he changed the subject abruptly. "How long will your traffic meeting last?"

"We practically finished to-day. An hour or two on Monday will wind it up."

"After which you'll go West?"

"After which I shall go West by the Monday noon train if I can make it. You couldn't hire me to stay in Boston an hour longer than I have to."

Silence for a time until Blount broke in upon Gantry's tapping of the dance-music rhythm with: "If I can close up a few unfinished business matters and get ready I may go with you, Dick. Would you mind?"

"Yes; I should mind so much that I'd willingly miss a train or so and worry out a few more of the chilly Boston hours rather than lose the chance of having you along."

"That is good of you, I'm sure. I should bore myself to death if I had to travel alone."

Blount's rejoinder might have passed for a mere friendly commonplace if it had not been for the rather curiously worded telegram. But it was a goodly portion of Gantry's business in life to put two and two together, and that phrase in the senator's message about a woman's apron-string interested him. Moreover, it was subtly suggestive.

"Ever meet your father's—er—the present Mrs. Blount, Evan?" he asked.

"No." Blount may have been Western-born, but the chilling discouragement he could crowd into the two-letter negation spoke eloquently of his Eastern training.

Gantry was rebuffed but not disheartened.

"She is a mighty fine woman," he ventured.

"So I have been given to understand." This time Blount's reply was icy. But now Gantry's eyes were twinkling and he pressed his advantage.

"You'll have to reckon pretty definitely with her if you go out to the greasewood country, Evan. Next to your father, she is the court of last resort; indeed, there are a good many people who insist that she is the court—the power behind the throne, you know."

There is one ditch out of which the most persistent and gladsome mocker may not drive his victim, and that is the ditch of silence. Blount said nothing. Nevertheless, Gantry tried once more.

"Not interested, Evan?"

Blount turned and looked his companion coldly in the eyes.

"Not in the slightest degree, Dick. Will you take that for your answer now, and remember it hereafter?"

"Sure," laughed the railroad man. And then, to round out the forbidden topic by adding worse to bad: "I didn't know it was a sore spot with you. How should I know? But, as I say, you'll have to reckon with her sooner or later, and—"

"Let's talk of something else," snapped Blount.

Gantry found a match and relighted his cigar. When he began again he was still thinking of the "apron-string" clause in the senator's telegram.

"I can't understand how any man with Western blood in his veins could ever be content to marry and settle down in this over-civilized neck of woods," he remarked, looking down upon the parked automobiles and around at the country-club evidences of the civilization.

"Can't you?" smiled Blount, with large lenience. One of the things the civilization had done for him was to make him good-naturedly tolerant of the crudeness of the outlander.

"No, I can't," asserted the Westerner. Then he added: "Of course, I don't know the Eastern young woman even by sight. She may be all that is lovely, desirable, and enticing—if a man could hope to live long enough to get really well acquainted with her."

"She is," declared Blount, with the air of one who had lived quite long enough to know.

Once more Gantry was putting two and two together. Blount's determination to go West and grow up with the country—his father's country—was apparently a very sudden one. Had the decision turned entirely upon the senator's telegram? Gantry, wise in his generation, thought not.

"You say that as if you'd been taking a few lessons," he laughed. Then, with the friendly impudence which only a college comradeship could excuse: "Is she here to-night?"

"No," said Blount, unguardedly making the response which admitted so much more than it said.

"Tell me about her," Gantry begged. "I don't often read a love story, but I like to hear 'em."

If it had been any one but Gantry, Blount would probably have had a sharp attack of reticence, with outward symptoms unmistakable to the dullest. But the time, the surroundings, and the exceeding newness of Patricia's "No" combined to break down the barriers of reserve.

"There isn't much to tell, Dick," he began half humorously, half in ill-concealed self-pity. "I've known her for a year, and I've loved her from the first day. That is Chapter One; and Chapter Two ends the story with one small word. She says 'No.'"

"The dickens she does!" said Gantry, in hearty sympathy. Then: "But that's a good sign, isn't it? Haven't I heard somewhere that they always say 'No' at first?"

Blount laughed in spite of himself. Gantry, the Dick Gantry of the college period, had always been a man's man, gay, light-hearted, and care-free to the outward eye, but in reality one who was carrying burdens of poverty and distress which might well have crushed an older and a stronger man. There had been no time for sentiment then, and Blount wondered if there had been in any later period.

"I am afraid I can't get any comfort out of that suggestion," he returned. "When Miss Patricia Anners says 'No,' I am quite sure she means it."

"Think so?" said Gantry, still sympathetic. "Well, I suppose you are the best judge. Tough, isn't it, old man? What's the obstacle?—if you can tell it without tearing the bandages off and saying 'Ouch!'"

"It is Miss Anners's career."

"H'm," was the doubtful comment; "I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate that a little for me. I'm not up in the 'career' classification."

"She has been studying at home and abroad in preparation for social-settlement work in the large cities. Of course, I knew about it; but I thought—I hoped—"

"You hoped it was only a young woman's fad—which it probably is," Gantry cut in.

"Y-yes; I'm afraid that was just what I did hope, Dick. But I couldn't talk against it. Confound it all, you can't go about smashing ideals for the people you love best!"

"Rich?" queried Gantry.

"Oh, no. Her father has the chair of paleontology, and never gets within speaking distance of the present century. The mother has been dead many years."

"And you say the girl has the Hull House ambition?"

"The social-betterment ambition. It's an ideal, and I can't smash it. You wouldn't smash it, either, Dick."

"No; I guess that's so. If I were in your fix I should probably do what you are doing—say 'Good-by, fond heart,' and hie me away to the forgetful edge of things. And it's simply astonishing how quickly the good old sage-brush hills will help a man to forget everything that ever happened to him before he ducked."

Blount winced a little at that. It was no part of his programme to forget Patricia. Indeed, for twenty-four hours, or the waking moiety of that period, he had been assuring himself of the utter impossibility of anything remotely approaching forgetfulness. This thought made him instantly self-reproachful; regretful for having shown a sort of disloyalty by opening the door of the precious and sacred things, even to so good a friend as Dick Gantry; and from regretting to amending was