can hear every sound right through in her room. Cousin Hannah, won't you please make her a cup of tea? I think it would do her good; you make such nice tea."

"Sure and certain!" agreed Cousin Hannah, heartily. Rising ponderously from her chair, she moved on heavy tiptoes out into the kitchen, the thin boards creaking as she walked.

"I might also remark that a person would have to be a saint to bear with Cousin Hannah," said Elizabeth, "she doesn't intend it, maybe, but she does rile me so!"

"I don't see why anybody would want to be a saint; I'd heap rather be a knight," spoke up little Harvie, nicknamed by her family "the Babe." She lay curled up on a lounge in the corner, ostensibly pulling out bastings, but really reading a worn old copy of Ivanhoe, which was the book of her heart. There were no children living near the lonely little ranch, and the Babe, who was only ten, solaced herself with the company of heroes and heroines of romance--much preferring the heroes.

"I'd rather be 'most anything than a 'mover'," declared Elizabeth, emphatically. "And if you want to know the reason, just look out of the window and watch this procession coming up from the road."

Ruth and the Babe ran to the window; Mary, leaving her machine, slipped quietly out of the room to see about her mother. Also Mary desired to have a little private talk with Cousin Hannah.

It was a pitifully ludicrous spectacle that the girls beheld. Up the driveway leading to the house came a dreary procession of those unfortunates known in western parlance as "movers," family tramps who follow the harvests in hope of getting a little work in the fields; always moving on when the crops are gathered, or planted, as the case may be--movers never became dwellers in any local territory.

These movers were, in appearance, even more wretched than usual. In a little covered cart drawn by a diminutive donkey, sat a pale woman with a baby in her arms, and two small and pallid children crouching beside her. Behind the cart the father of the family pushed valiantly, in a kindly endeavor to help along the donkey, while just ahead of that overburdened animal walked a small boy, holding, as further inducement, an alluring ear of corn just out of reach of the donkey's nose. Certainly the family justified Elizabeth's declaration that 'most anything was preferable to being a mover!

Ruth and Elizabeth both laughed at the comical procession, but the Babe's eyes were full of pity. "The poor things are coming up for water," she said sorrowfully. "Father always let them get water at our well--I'll go show them the way." And she ran out to meet the movers and show them the well at the back of the house, where they filled their water-jugs and quenched the thirst of the patient and unsatisfied donkey.

"I wish to goodness Father never had gone to Cuba," sighed Ruth, as she turned from the window to take up her button-holes, "it is so awfully lonesome without him."

"I think it was splendid," said Elizabeth, with shining eyes, "to be among the very first of the volunteers. And maybe he'll do some deed of daring and be made an officer. Think how nice it will be to say, when the war is over, that our father figures in history--maybe as one of the foremost heroes of the Spanish-American war."

"You're always dreaming of things that never happen, Elizabeth," scoffed practical Ruth. "Of course he won't be made a big officer. If he comes back just a plain Captain I'll be mighty glad."

"O, well, the world's greatest men and women have always been dreamers," asserted Elizabeth, cheerfully, "I can't help being born different from the rest of you, can I?"

"H'm, I reckon not--but you can start a fire in the stove. People must eat, no matter how great they are. It's your time to get supper."

"O, dear, it's bad to be born poor!" sighed Elizabeth, as she arose reluctantly. "Especially when there's a longing within you to do perfectly fine things, and not mere drudgery. I wish I were a princess--it seems to me I was born to rule. I'm sure I would be a wise and capable sovereign. Well, even queens stoop to minister to the lowly, like Saint Elizabeth, so I'll go get supper for the Spooners!"

And with her head in the clouds, the throneless queen marched majestically kitchenward, to engage in the humble occupation of cooking supper for her family.

Voices from her mother's closed door reached her ears as she passed. Elizabeth would have scorned eavesdropping, but--the ranch being located in the prairie region of Texas, where lumber is so scarce that just as little as possible is used in building, and the walls being merely board partitions, she could not help hearing Cousin Hannah's voice, always strident, rising above her mother's and Mary's lower tones.

"Fiddle-diddle! What's the use of mincin' matters anyway? She's bound to know, sooner or later--ought to know without--tellin', if she had a grain o' common sense. Ain't a single, solitary thing about her favors the rest of you all."

The words sounded very clearly in Elizabeth's startled ears, arousing a train of troubled thoughts in her mind, as she moved mechanically about the kitchen. She felt quite certain that they were talking about her, and that Cousin Hannah wanted to tell her something that Mrs. Spooner and Mary didn't want known.

"I wonder what it can be," pondered Elizabeth, as she slowly stirred the hominy pot. "Whether Cousin Hannah thinks so or not, I've always known I wasn't like the rest."

This was quite true; Elizabeth, though she dearly loved the parents and sisters who had always, Cousin Hannah declared, spoiled her, yet could not help feeling that she was, mentally and physically superior to them, "made of finer clay," she would have put it. People often remarked on this lack of resemblance to the others, and when they did so in Mrs. Spooner's presence she always hastily changed the subject. Elizabeth had often wondered why. Somehow there seemed always to have been a mystery surrounding her--something that, if explained, would prove very thrilling indeed.

Occupied with these thoughts, she moved from cupboard to table, and from table to fire, preparing the evening meal with deft skill, for anything Elizabeth Spooner did she did a little better than other people.

Outside the window stretched a vast brown-green plain, bounded by a horizon line like a ring. There was monotony in the prospect, and yet a curious sense of adventure and romance, as there is about the sea. Elizabeth delighted in the mystic beauty of the prairie, yet to-day her fine eyes studied the level unseeingly as she glanced through the window, looking to see if Jonah Bean was in sight; the glories of sunset that flooded the plain passed almost unnoticed. She was thinking too earnestly on her own problem to observe the outside world.

"If I were by chance adopted, I certainly have a right to know who I am," Elizabeth pondered, as she set the table beautifully, with certain artistic touches that the clumsier hands of the other girls somehow could never manage. "It won't make any difference in my feelings for father and mother and the girls if I should happen to be born in a higher station of life than theirs--though I can easily see how poor mother could think it might; I trust I'm above being snobbish--" Elizabeth's eyes began to glow with a resolute