She walked toward the array of yellow lighted windows that showed through the deepening darkness, making her way over the hard ground, hurriedly, skirt lifted in the free hand. She had not inspected the shadowy town beyond glancing casually to register the ill-defined impressions of scattered stock pens, sprawling buildings, a short string of box-cars, a water-tank. The country, the location of the settlement, was the thing which had demanded her first attention, for it was all strange, new, a bit terrifying in the twilight. Two men passed her, talking; their voices ceased and she knew that they turned to stare; then one spoke in a lowered tone ... and the night had them. A man on horseback rode down the street at a slow trot. She wondered uneasily if that was the horse which had raced away at the sound of the shot. From the most brilliantly lighted building the sound of a mechanical piano suddenly burst, hammering out a blatant melody. A thick sprinkling of stars had pricked through the darkening sky and Ann, as she walked along, scanned the outline that each structure made against them. Once she laughed shortly to herself and thought, "_The_ two-story building!" And, almost with that thought, she stood before it. An oil lamp on an uncertain post was set close against the veranda and through an open window she saw a woman, bearing a tray, pause beside a table and deposit steaming dishes. She walked up the steps, opened the screen door, and entered an unlighted hall, barren, also, to judge from the sounds. On one side was the dining room; on the other, a cramped office. "This is the Manzanita House?" she asked a youth who, hat on the back of his head, read a newspaper which was spread over the top of a small glass cigar case on the end of a narrow counter. "Yes, ma'am"--evidently surprised. He saw her bag, looked at her face again, took off his hat shyly and opened a ruled copybook to which a pencil was attached by a length of grimy cotton twine. He pushed it toward her, and the woman, as she drew off her glove, saw that this was the hotel register. In a bold, large hand she wrote: "Ann Lytton, Portland, Maine." "I'd like a room for to-night," she said, "and to-morrow I'd like to get to the Sunset mine. Can you direct me?" A faint suggestion of anxiety was in her query and on the question the youth looked at her sharply, met her gaze and let his waver off. He turned to put the register on the shelf behind him. "Why, I can find out," he answered, evasively. "It's over thirty miles out there and th' road ain't so very good yet. You can get th' automobile to take you. It's out now--took the doctor out this afternoon--and won't be back till late, prob'ly." He took the register from the shelf again and, on pretext of noting her room number on the margin of the leaf, re-read her name and address, moving his lips in the soundless syllables.