"But, father!" burst out Lucy, almost tearfully, "he was so tired--he fell asleep as soon as he sat down, and I never did get him to consent to be my superintendent! Don't you see--" "Well, write him a note then," directed the judge brusquely, "and leave it on his desk. Now, Lucy dear, really I'm getting so nervous I'm hardly accountable. _Please_ hurry. And, Kitty, please hurry, too!" Like two souls haled from the world without a word of explanation or confession, Kitty and Lucy both sat down under duress to pen a last appeal to the little man who, despite his stern disregard, somehow held a place in their hearts. Kitty could have wept with vexation at the thought of not seeing him again--and after she had brought her mind to forgive him, too! She wrote blindly, she knew not what, whether it was accusation or entreaty, and sealed the envelope with a bang of her tiny fist--and even then he did not awaken. Lucy wrote carefully, wrestling to turn the implacable one from his purpose and yet feeling that he would have his will. She sealed her note and put it upon his desk hesitatingly; then, as Kitty turned away, she dropped her handkerchief beside it. It was a time-worn strategy, such as only the innocent and guileless think of in their hour of adversity. When she ran back to recover it Lucy drew a dainty book from her bosom--Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese"--and placed it across her note as if to save it from the wind, and between two leaves she slipped the forget-me-nots which he had given her at Hidden Water. As the thud of horses' hoofs died away silence settled down upon the Dos S ranch house, the sombre silence of the desert, unbroken by the murmur of women's voices or the echo of merry laughter, and the sleeping man stirred uneasily on his bed. An hour passed, and then from the _ramada_ there came a sound of wailing. Hardy rose up on his bed suddenly, startled. The memory of the past came to him vaguely, like fragments of an eerie dream; then the world came right and he found himself in the bunk-house, alone--and Tommy outside, crying as if for the dead. Leaping up from his blankets Hardy opened the door and called him in--hoarse, black, distorted, yet overflowing with love and affection. Poor little Tommy! He took him in his arms to comfort him, and bedded him down on the pillow. But when he stepped outside he found that his world too was vacant--the house deserted, the corrals empty, the _rodeo_ camp a smouldering fireplace, surrounded by a wilderness of tin cans. As the slow grief of the forsaken came upon him he turned and went to his room, where the atmosphere of womankind still lingered to suggest the dear hands that were gone, and suddenly his eyes leaped to the letters left upon the table. It was Kitty's which he opened first, perhaps because it was nearest; but the torrent of inconsequential words confused him by their unreason and he turned to Lucy's, reading it over thoughtfully. "DEAR RUFUS: