The stars are bright to-night; They surely are a sight, Sendin' their flickerin' light From an awful, unknown height. Why do they shine so bright? I'm most o'ercome with fright---- "Of course I reely wasn't scared," he offered with a deprecatory smile, "but there wasn't any other word that I could think of just then an' so I shoved her in. It rhymes anyhow an' just about says what I wanted." He resumed: When I look up into the night, An' see their flickerin' light. He ceased and looked at Hollis with an abashed smile. "It don't seem to sound so good when I'm readin' her out loud," he apologized. "An' I've thought that mebbe I've worked that 'night' an' 'light' rhyme over-time. But of course I've got 'fright' an' 'sight' an' 'height' in there to kind of off-set that." He squirmed in his chair. "You take her an' read her." He passed the papers over to Hollis and rose from his chair. "I'll be goin' back to the outfit; Norton was sayin' that he wanted me to look up some strays an' I don't want him to be waitin' for me. But I'd like to have one of them pomes printed in the _Kicker_--just to show the folks in this here country that there's a real pote in their midst." "Why----" began Hollis, about to express his surprise over his guest's sudden determination to depart. But he saw Nellie Hazelton standing just outside the door, and the cause of Ace's projected departure was no longer a mystery. He had gone before Hollis could have finished his remonstrance, and was fast disappearing in a cloud of dust down the trail when Hollis turned slowly to see Nellie Hazelton smiling broadly. "I just couldn't resist coming out," she said. "It rather startled me to discover that there was a real poet in the country." "There seems to be no doubt of it," returned Hollis with a smile. But he immediately became serious. "Ace means well," he added. "I imagine that it wasn't entirely an ambition to rush into print that moved him to submit his poems; he wants to help fill up the paper." Miss Hazelton laughed. "I really think," she said, looking after the departing poet, "that he might have been fibbing a little when he said that the 'night' had not 'scared' him. He ran from me," she added, amusement shining in her eyes, "and I should not like to think that any woman could appear so forbidding and mysterious as the darkness." Hollis had been scanning one of the poems in his hand. He smiled whimsically at Miss Hazelton as she concluded. "Here is Ace's opinion on that subject," he said. "Since you have doubted him I think it only fair that you should give him a hearing. Won't you read it?" She came forward and seated herself in the chair that the poet had vacated, taking the mass of paper that Hollis passed over to her. "Shall I read it aloud?" she asked with a smile at him. "I think you had better not," he returned; "it might prove embarrassing."