Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane. He was a man of much reading--of the periodical sort--and the big sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread with abundance. One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was Berea's full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart riding-suit which he wore. "I'd like to roll him in the creek," muttered one of them to his neighbor. This dislike Berrie perceived--in some degree--and to Frank she privately said: "Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He's been very sick." Frank maliciously grinned. "Oh, we'll treat him _right_. We won't do a thing to him!" "Now, Frank," she warned, "if you try any of your tricks on him you'll hear from me." "Why all this worry on your part?" he asked, keenly. "How long since you found him?" "We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o' blue and lonesome I couldn't help trying to chirk him up." "How will Cliff take all this chirking business?" "Cliff ain't my guardian--yet," she laughingly responded. "Mr. Norcross is a college man, and not used to our ways--" "_Mister_ Norcross--what's his front name?" "Wayland." He snorted. "Wayland! If he gets past us without being called 'pasty' he's in luck. He's a 'lunger' if there ever was one." The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: "Mr. Norcross ain't used to rough ways, and he's not very rugged, you ought 'o kind o' favor him for a while." The girl herself did not understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face graver than anybody had ever seen it. "I don't feel right in leaving you here," she said, at last; "but I must be ridin'." And while Meeker ordered her horse brought out, she walked to the gate with Norcross at her side.