“I shore am thet lucky man who found you a job when you was sick an’ needed a change ... An’ thet you’ve grown so pretty an’ so well you owe all to me.” “Tex, if you really were Frank Owens, _that_ would make a great difference. I owe him everything. I would—but I don’t believe you are he.” “It’s a sure honest gospel fact,” declared Tex. “I hope to die if it ain’t!” Jane shook her head sadly at his monstrous prevarication. “I don’t believe you,” she said, and left him standing there. It might have been mere coincidence that during the next few days both Nevada and Panhandle waylaid and conveyed to her intelligence by divers and pathetic arguments the astounding fact that each was Mr. Frank Owens. More likely, however, was it the unerring instinct of lovers who had sensed the importance and significance of this mysterious correspondent’s part in bringing health and happiness into Jane Stacey’s life. She listened to them with anger and sadness and amusement at their deceit, and she had the same answer for both: “I don’t believe you.” And through these machinations of the cowboys, Jane had begun to have vague and sweet and disturbing suspicions of her own as to the real identity of that mysterious cowboy, Frank Owens. Andy had originality as well as daring. He would have completely deceived Jane if she had not happened, by the merest accident, to discover the relation between him and certain love letters she had begun to find in her desk. She was deceived at first, for the typewriting of these was precisely like that in the letters by Frank Owens. She had been suddenly aware of a wild start of rapture. That had given place to a shameful, open-eyed realization of the serious condition of her own heart. But she happened to discover in Andy the writer of these missives, and her dream was shattered, if not forgotten. Andy certainly would not carry love letters to her that he did not write. He had merely learned to use the same typewriter, and at opportune times he had slipped the letters into her desk. Jane now began to have her own little aching, haunting secret which was so hard to put out of her mind. Every letter and every hint of Frank Owens made her remember. Therefore she decided to put a check to Andy’s sly double-dealing. She addressed a note to him and wrote: “Dear Andy:—That day at the train when you thought I was a poor old schoolmarm you swore you were not Frank Owens. Now you swear you are! If you were a man who knew what truth is you’d have a chance. But now—No! You are a monster of iniquity. I don’t believe you.” She left the note in plain sight where she always found his letters in her desk. The next morning the note was gone. And so was Andy. She did not see him for three days. * * * * *