"It might not change your feelings, but it should change your intentions. Do you mean you'd marry--" Kurt had an incredulous expression on his face. "In a second, if she'd have me. I'd buy her everything she wanted so she wouldn't have to steal." "But after you were married and people found out what she was, you'd be ashamed--" "Ashamed! I'd put my little thief on a throne, and whoever dared to try to take her off would get it in the neck." The car speeded up again. The man at the wheel saw the utter futility of further expostulation. "I'll leave it to time and cow-punching," he thought sagely. "Time and work are the best healers, especially for the young. Preaching is of no avail." Night came on. Jo looked up at a little lone star which was trying to make its light shine without a properly darkened background. "That's a poor little orphan star--like her. I'll look for it every night now. I wish I hadn't blabbed to Kurt. He hasn't a nose for orange blossoms." In the fortnight that followed, Jo worked indefatigably, but his heart and his thoughts were back in Chicago, except when now and then his eyes turned to a fertile little beauty-spot valleyed between the hills. For here he had located an imaginary cottage--his cottage and hers. This mirage, of course, always showed a little slip of a girl standing in the doorway. To the surprise and dismay of his associates Jo the spender became Jo the saver that his dream might come true. He offered no addendum to the revelation he had made to Kurt. They met often, but in ranch life discourse is not frequent, and Jo instinctively felt that his recital of Love's Young Dream had fallen upon unsympathetic ears, while the foreman, unversed in the Language of Love, was mystified by the lad's silence. Three weeks later the "man without a nose for orange blossoms" was again in town. As acting sheriff of the county lately, Kurt had dropped in to see the jailer. "How's business, Bender? Any new boarders?" he asked. "Yes; a gal run in for stealing. Didn't find the goods on her; but she's a sly one with the record of being a lifelong thief. She strayed up here from Chicago." "What's her name?" he asked casually. "Marta Sills." "I wonder if it could be Jo's Marta," the acting sheriff thought suddenly. "She may have followed him up here." He walked back to the hotel, trying to decide whether he should tell Jo. If she should prove to be his girl, her arrest up here should show him that his love hadn't worked the miracle he expected. Jo had been a little more quiet since his return, but he gave no signs of pining away, and maybe if nothing revived his interest, it might die a natural death. The story Jo had told him of the little waif had made a deep impression upon him, however.