“Must have been there,” mused Wade, thoughtfully, and he tried to recall all the faces he had seen.  This was impossible, of course, yet he remembered many.  Then he visualized the places in Denver that for one reason or another had struck him particularly.  Suddenly into one of these flashed the pale, sullen, bold face of Jack Belllounds.

“It was there!” he exclaimed, incredulously.  “Well!...  If thet’s not the strangest yet!  Could I be mistaken?  No.  I saw him....  Belllounds must have known it—­must have let him stay there....  Maybe put him there!  He’s just the kind of a man to go to extremes to reform his son.”

Singular as was this circumstance, Wade dwelt only momentarily on it.  He dismissed it with the conviction that it was another strange happening in the string of events that had turned his steps toward White Slides Ranch.  Wade’s mind stirred to the probability of an early sight of Columbine Belllounds.  He would welcome it, both as interesting and pleasurable, and surely as a relief.  The sooner a meeting with her was over the better.  His life had been one long succession of shocks, so that it seemed nothing the future held could thrill him, amaze him, torment him.  And yet how well he knew that his heart was only the more responsive for all it had withstood!  Perhaps here at White Slides he might meet with an experience dwarfing all others.  It was possible; it was in the nature of events.  And though he repudiated such a possibility, he fortified himself against a subtle divination that he might at last have reached the end of his long trail, where anything might happen.

Three of the hounds lay down at Wade’s feet.  Kane, the bloodhound, stood watching this new master, after the manner of a dog who was a judge of men.  He sniffed at Wade.  He grew a little less surly.

Wade’s gaze, however, was on the path that led down along the border of the brook to disappear in the willows.  Above this clump of yellowing trees could be seen the ranch-house.  A girl with fair hair stepped off the porch.  She appeared to be carrying something in her arms, and shortly disappeared behind the willows.  Wade saw her and surmised that she was coming to his cabin.  He did not expect any more or think any more.  His faculties condensed to the objective one of sight.

The girl, when she reappeared, was perhaps a hundred yards distant.  Wade bent on her one keen, clear glance.  Then his brain and his blood beat wildly.  He saw a slender girl in riding-costume, lithe and strong, with the free step of one used to the open.  It was this form, this step that struck Wade.  “My—­God! how like Lucy!” he whispered, and he tried to pierce the distance to see her face.  It gleamed in the sunshine.  Her fair hair waved in the wind.  She was coming, but so slowly!  All of Wade that was physical and emotional seemed to wait—­clamped.  The moment was age-long, with nothing beyond it.  While she was still at a distance her face became