"By Jove!" cries Ferdie to this information, looking with longing eyes to the South. "But we will return by the K. P., auntie, won't we?" Then he questions suddenly: "You have killed buffalo, haven't you, Captain Lawrence?" "A few," remarks the Westerner quietly, and from that time on he is a hero in Ferdie's eyes. Mr. Ollie having by this time finished his meal,--a business that he has interspersed with a few curt remarks about the badness and greasiness of Western cooking and the general inefficiency of frontier waiter-girls, he arises and suggests, "If you wish to miss this train, you had all better linger a little longer over the table." To this, Mrs. Livingston suddenly gasps, "Hurry! The passengers are all leaving the room!" "Oh, no hurry! They are only gentlemen anxious to get at their cigars," says Harry, to whom the meal has been a very pleasant one, Miss Travenion having made it brilliant by one or two glances from her bright eyes and a few vivacious remarks. But the chaperon suddenly cries in a voice of terror, "If we miss the train, we are here on the prairies, unprotected and ALONE!" This pathetic remark, in a rising young frontier city of two thousand inhabitants, produces a giggle from Miss Louise. She titters, "Pooh, ma! This is a metropolis. I saw a dozen trainmen, half a hundred loafers and one or two tramps on the platform as we drew up." But Mrs. Livingston having risen, the party saunter towards the door, that lady thanking Lawrence for some information he has given, tending to dissipate her fears of wild Western adventure on the railroad. She concludes this by saying, "You must give us a little of your aid and protection, we have had so little frontier experience, Captain,"--a request that gentleman is very glad to accede to, and he promises that he will look after them all, especially the widow, very thoroughly and very faithfully during their journey. Harry in conversation with Mrs. Livingston has left the room, so have Ferdie and Louise, and Ollie is employed settling the score; Erma finds herself alone. Actuated, perchance, by a wish to learn more of the gentleman who has been kind to her this afternoon, and perhaps prompted by some curiosity to know why he is treated with so much respect under the familiar appellation of "Cap" by the Western waiter-girls, she turns back, and walking up to the bright-eyed abigail who has waited on them, says, "You seem to know the gentleman who brought me into supper this evening very well." "Oh, Cap Lawrence?" answers the girl. "I should think so; we all have a pretty powerful liking and respect for him about this portion of the country." "And why?"