10

draw them together. Soon Dayton shows her photographs of the various children he is educating, and the picture Birdie has

sent him of their supposed children. He calls them "his

kids", and Minette exolaime over his large family. He laughs ’ and explains to her that he is 9. lonely old "hatch", good for nothing but to care for the other fellows kid. She is very sorry for him, and mnhn: wonders shy he has never nnrried. He explains to her id: something of his life out in the great north- west, how he began as a boy around the cattle camps, in the

days when the land was"un'bla.zed"or surveyed, of the ro ugh life in the new land, 01' how he acquired first one and then another head pf cattle. Of his first brand ---The Dounble Bar B ---

How he dreamed the time would come when like the king of biblical days he would so. : "The "cattle on a. thousand hills are minB". That time has actgsutlly come. He had T Abslized his boyish dream, and is brand is known all over but in the hard shuffle

- e A.t~,«—-; : .1 ing in life. mnette asks him what that is. and he replies:

£4

kt Love? She rises hurriedly. as Nora comes along the path,‘

and the Man from Canada, in that impetuous and bashful way pecu- liar to the westerner, and the simple and great of heart, in takes

out his card and awkwardly hands it to her. She reads:

JQQ D. Dazton,