As Gwynne left his room the Japanese "chambermaid," who had been about to knock, informed him that Miss Otis awaited him below. He ran down-stairs and found her still on her horse. Abe held another horse by the bridle. "It is nine o'clock--" began Isabel, but Gwynne interrupted her, rarely apologetic. "I hardly slept. There was such an infernal racket. A theatrical troupe--" "There generally is. How do you like your horse?" Gwynne examined the horse, and was good enough to remark that it was a credit to California. Then he added: "It did not occur to me last night--my luggage is expressed to the ranch and I haven't my riding-togs--" Then he reddened at Isabel's gay laugh and Abe's suppressed smile. "Oh, well," said Isabel, as she sprang from her horse. "The bloods will be too busy to notice as we ride down Main Street, and after that it won't matter." She went with him into the dining-room of the hotel, a room scrupulously clean, but with no attempt at decoration beyond the various advertisements of beer on the white walls. There was a long table down the middle of the room and a great many small ones. Most of the latter were empty, although two beside the door were covered with steaks and eggs and coffee and rolls. One man, who had evidently finished, had swung his chair about, tipped it against the wall, and was addressing a political monologue to his toothpick. Gwynne led Isabel to a table in a corner by a window, and indicated the company occupying more than half of the long table. "'Busted,' was the word they used, and I cannot think of a better one to describe them. I talked with the men in the bar, and later wandered into the parlor where the women were, some tearful, others indignant. One had an infant, and there were several small children running about, although it was midnight. The soubrette was chewing gum and anathematizing Rosewater as the 'jayest town on the slope,' and others were calling for the blood of the manager, who had absconded with the receipts of an unprofitable week. They interested me, as all your weird specimens do, and I found them a surprisingly decent lot, considering that it is the cheapest sort of a vaudeville troupe. That poor little woman with the red eyes and the parti-colored hair is the mother of the infant. I saw one of the children carrying it about the hall as I left my room. She wears spangled tights--she told me with a lively regret at the prospect of pawning them--and shoots balls from the head of that young man that looks like a parson. And the soubrette--all my ideals are shattered! Look at her." The soubrette had a lank young body neatly attired in a store suit and shirt-waist. Her face was sallow and her black hair as lank as her body, but her eyes were keen and bright, and she was indisputably respectable. She was drinking her coffee with both elbows on the table and listening with a sort of indifferent sympathy to an elderly untidy woman who was sniffling.