And she had stepped into a broken-down patio littered with alfalfa straw and debris, all clear in the sunlight.  Upon a bench, back toward her, sat a man looking out through the rents in the broken wall.  He had not heard her.  The place was not quite so filthy and stifling as the passages Madeline had come through to get there.  Then she saw that it had been used as a corral.  A rat ran boldly across the dirt floor.  The air swarmed with flies, which the man brushed at with weary hand.  Madeline did not recognize Stewart.  The side of his face exposed to her gaze was black, bruised, bearded.  His clothes were ragged and soiled.  There were bits of alfalfa in his hair.  His shoulders sagged.  He made a wretched and hopeless figure sitting there.  Madeline divined something of why Nels shrank from being present.

“Mr. Stewart.  It is I, Miss Hammond, come to see you,” she said.

He grew suddenly perfectly motionless, as if he had been changed to stone.  She repeated her greeting.

His body jerked.  He moved violently as if instinctively to turn and face this intruder; but a more violent movement checked him.

Madeline waited.  How singular that this ruined cowboy had pride which kept him from showing his face!  And was it not shame more than pride?

“Mr. Stewart, I have come to talk with you, if you will let me.”

“Go away,” he muttered.

“Mr. Stewart!” she began, with involuntary hauteur.  But instantly she corrected herself, became deliberate and cool, for she saw that she might fail to be even heard by this man.  “I have come to help you.  Will you let me?”

“For God’s sake!  You—­you—­” he choked over the words.  “Go away!”

“Stewart, perhaps it was for God’s sake that I came,” said Madeline, gently.  “Surely it was for yours—­and your sister’s—­” Madeline bit her tongue, for she had not meant to betray her knowledge of Letty.

He groaned, and, staggering up to the broken wall, he leaned there with his face hidden.  Madeline reflected that perhaps the slip of speech had been well.

“Stewart, please let me say what I have to say?”

He was silent.  And she gathered courage and inspiration.

“Stillwell is deeply hurt, deeply grieved that he could not turn you back from this—­this fatal course.  My brother is also.  They wanted to help you.  And so do I. I have come, thinking somehow I might succeed where they have failed.  Nels brought your sister’s letter.  I—­I read it.  I was only the more determined to try to help you, and indirectly help your mother and Letty.  Stewart, we want you to come to the ranch.  Stillwell needs you for his foreman.  The position is open to you, and you can name your salary.  Both Al and Stillwell are worried about Don Carlos, the vaqueros, and the raids down along the border.  My cowboys are without a capable leader.  Will you come?”