“Why, you’re rather a pretty girl if you were fixed up,” said the old lady, sitting up with interest now.  “I can’t remember your mother, but I don’t think she had fine features like that.”

“They said I looked like father,” said Elizabeth.

“Did they?  Well, I believe it’s true,” with satisfaction.  “I couldn’t bear you if you looked like those lowdown ——­”

“Grandmother!” Elizabeth stood up, and flashed her Bailey eyes.

“You needn’t ‘grandmother’ me all the time,” said the lady petulantly.  “But you look quite handsome when you say it.  Take off that ill-fitting coat.  It isn’t thick enough for winter, anyway.  What in the world have you got round your waist?  A belt?  Why, that’s a man’s belt!  And what have you got in it?  Pistols?  Horrors!  Marie, take them away quick!  I shall faint!  I never could bear to be in a room with one.  My husband used to have one on his closet shelf, and I never went near it, and always locked the room when he was out.  You must put them out in the hall.  I cannot breathe where pistols are.  Now sit down and tell me all about it, how old you are, and how you got here.”

Elizabeth surrendered her pistols with hesitation.  She felt that she must obey her grandmother, but was not altogether certain whether it was safe for her to be weaponless until she was sure this was friendly ground.

At the demand she began back as far as she could remember, and told the story of her life, pathetically, simply, without a single claim to pity, yet so earnestly and vividly that the grandmother, lying with her eyes closed, forgot herself completely, and let the tears trickle unbidden and unheeded down her well-preserved cheeks.

When Elizabeth came to the graves in the moonlight, she gasped, and sobbed:  “O, Johnny, Johnny, my little Johnny!  Why did you always be such a bad, bad boy?” and when the ride in the desert was described, and the man from whom she fled, the grandmother held her breath, and said, “O, how fearful!” Her interest in the girl was growing, and kept at white heat during the whole of the story.

There was one part of her experience, however, that Elizabeth passed over lightly, and that was the meeting with George Trescott Benedict.  Instinctively she felt that this experience would not find a sympathetic listener.  She passed it over by merely saying that she had met a kind gentleman from the East who was lost, and that they had ridden together for a few miles until they reached a town; and he had telegraphed to his friends, and gone on his way.  She said nothing about the money he had lent to her, for she shrank from speaking about him more than was necessary.  She felt that her grandmother might feel as the old woman of the ranch had felt about their travelling together.  She left it to be inferred that she might have had a little money with her from home.  At least, the older woman asked no questions about how she secured provisions for the way.