With Lemuel Fogg there came, one day, a ranchman named Davison; and in their wake followed herds of bellowing, half-wild cattle, and groups of brisk-riding, shouting cowboys, who rode down the fields in the moist soil by the stream, as they galloped in pursuit of their refractory charges. The advent of the cattle and the cowboys, the establishment of the Davison ranch, the erection of houses and bunk-rooms, stables and corrals, filled Justin’s life to the brim with excitement. He fraternized with the cowboys, and struck up a warm friendship with Philip Davison’s son Ben, a lively young fellow older than himself, who could ride a horse not only like a cowboy, but like a circus athlete, for he could perform the admirable feat of standing in the saddle with arms folded across his breast while his well-trained broncho tore around the new corral at a gallop. When the other members of the Davison household came and were domiciled in the new ranch house, Justin found that Lucy Davison, the ranchman’s niece, the “cousin” of whom Ben had talked, was a beautiful girl of Mary’s age, with more than Mary’s charm of manner. She was paler than Mary, and had not her rose-leaf cheeks, but she was more beautiful in her way, and she had something which Mary lacked. Justin did not know what it was, for he was not yet analytical, but he was interested in a wholly new manner. He could not be with her enough, and when he was absent thoughts of her filled his mind and even his dreams. Mary Jasper hastened to call on Lucy Davison; and in doing so made the acquaintance of that most interesting person, Miss Pearl Newcome, Davison’s housekeeper. Miss Newcome had passed the beauty stage, if indeed she had ever dwelt at all in that delectable period which should come by right to every member of the sex; but she still cherished the romantic illusions of her earlier years, and kept them embalmed, as it were, in sundry fascinating volumes, which were warded and locked in her trunk up stairs. She brought these out at psychological moments, smelling sweetly of cedar and moth balls, and read from them, to Mary’s great delight; for there never were such charming romances in the world, and never will be again, no matter who writes them. Some of them were in the form of pamphlets, yellow and falling to pieces; others were in creaky-backed books; and still others, and these the most read, in cunning bindings of Miss Newcome’s own contriving.