Old Jonas P. Lonergan, his crutch beside him, is lying comfortably in another lounging chair. But he already looks much more vigorous. Captain Dan Rugley, as ever, is tipped back against the wall in his favorite position. Frances is with her sewing at a low table, while Pratt is lying on the rug at his mother's feet. "What's that Mr. Tooley said in his letter, Frances?" asked Pratt. "Is he sure the man who was killed on the railroad when he went home from here was a man named Pete Marin, who once was orderly at the soldiers' home?" "Yes," said Frances, gravely. "He was walking the track, they thought. Either he was intoxicated or he did not hear the train. Poor fellow!" "Blamed rascal!" ejaculated Jonas P. Lonergan. "He made us some trouble--but it's over," said Pratt. "You showed what sort of stuff you were made of, young man," said the Captain, thoughtfully, "at that very time. Maybe you've got something to thank that Pete for." "And Ratty M'Gill?" asked Pratt, smiling. "Poor Ratty!" said Frances again. "He's gone down to the Pecos country," said the Captain, briskly. "Best place for him. Maybe he will know enough not to get in with such fellows as that Pete again." "I should have been much afraid had I known what Pratt was getting into out here," Mrs. Sanderson ventured. "Now, now, Sister! Don't try to make a mollycoddle out o' the boy," said Jonas P. Lonergan. "I tell you we're going to make a man out o' Pratt here. I've bought an interest in the Bar-T for him. He's going to take some of the work off the Captain's shoulders when we get him broke in, hey, Dan?" "Right you are, Lon!" agreed the other old man. Frances smiled quietly to hear them plan. She put her needle in and out of the work she was doing slowly. By and by her fingers stopped altogether and she looked away across the ranges. She, too, was planning. She was seeing herself living in a college town the next winter, with daddy for company, while Mr. Lonergan and Pratt and his mother remained on at the Bar-T. She saw herself graduating after a few years from some advanced school, quite the equal of Pratt in education. Meanwhile he would be learning to change the vast Bar-T ranges into wheat and milo fields, and taking up the new farming that is revolutionizing the Panhandle. And after that--and after that----? "How about Ming bringing us a pitcher of nice cool lemonade, eh, Frances?" said the Captain, breaking in upon her day-dream. "All right, Daddy. I'll tell him," said Frances of the Ranges. THE END End of Project Gutenberg's Frances of the Ranges, by Amy Bell Marlowe