So the girl, looking at him, thinks: "Some men who might consider themselves of perhaps higher breeding than this one beside me, would have made a joke out of that awful _contretemps_, but Captain Lawrence is a gentleman, and gentlemen are very much the same all the world over," and once or twice, when he does not notice it, she turns grateful eyes upon him during pauses in the meal. A moment after, Mr. Chauncey re-appears, followed by the Livingstons. Mrs. Livingston mutters: "Good gracious, Erma, how you frightened me. My heart is beating yet. If anything had happened to you, what would I have said to your father?" She would continue her emotion, did not Miss Travenion quietly say, "You owe your supper this evening to Captain Lawrence, who was kind enough to take charge of me in the crush, and also to look after your interests in the matter of chairs and vacant table." To which Miss Louise ejaculates: "Oh, how good of you. I'm dying of hunger!" and the widow, who still remembers the fortunate compliment of the young man, remarks: "Captain, as I owe my meal to you, I will sit beside you," giving him a grateful glance and taking the chair on the young man's left hand. Then, being compelled to it, Mr. Oliver Livingston suddenly remembers that he has met the Westerner before,--a thing he has forgotten, though he has passed him several times upon the train, and suddenly says: "How are yer?" in an absent-minded sort of way, and seating himself enjoys the pleasures of gastronomy. As the party's appetites become satisfied, their tongues begin to move in conversation, and Harry, taking advantage of the situation, proceeds to make himself very agreeable to Mrs. Livingston; for this young man has been thinking the matter over during his three or four hours on the train, and has concluded that to be a friend of the chaperon's will be very useful to him in his intercourse with Miss Travenion. "I was afraid," says the New York widow, "that Erma had been carried off by Indians." "Indians," remarks Lawrence, "were plentiful enough about here four or five years ago, but the railroad, with its settlements, has swept them back. In 1867 there were too many of them at times," and the young man's brow grows dark and his lips compressed with some recollection of the past. Throwing this off, he explains lightly to Mr. Ferdie, who begins eagerly questioning him on the point, that any buffalo that may be seen will be probably far to the West of where they are now; their best hope of catching sight of them being during the next day's journey. "If you had wanted to see buffalo in quantities," he continues, "you should have journeyed on the K. P., one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles south of here. There they graze, sometimes, even now, in droves of ten thousand by the side of the railway track."