Phil saw a look of relief in his friend's face as Patches answered Kitty with sympathetic interest. "It certainly will be a great pleasure, Miss Reid, especially for you, to have one so distinguished for his scholarship in the neighborhood. Is Professor Parkhill visiting Arizona for his health?" Something in Patches' voice caused Phil to turn hastily aside. But Kitty, who was thinking how perfectly Patches understood her, noticed nothing in his grave tones save his usual courteous deference. "Partly because of his health," she answered, "but he is going to prepare a series of lectures, I understand. He says that in the crude and uncultivated mentalities of our--" "Here he is now," interrupted Phil, as the distinguished guest of the Cross-Triangle appeared, coming slowly toward them. Professor Everard Charles Parkhill looked the part to which, from his birth, he had been assigned by his over-cultured parents. His slender body, with its narrow shoulders and sunken chest, frail as it was, seemed almost too heavy for his feeble legs. His thin face, bloodless and sallow, with a sparse, daintily trimmed beard and weak watery eyes, was characterized by a solemn and portentous gravity, as though, realizing fully the profound importance of his mission in life, he could permit no trivial thought to enter his bald, domelike head. One knew instinctively that in all the forty-five or fifty years of his little life no happiness or joy that had not been scientifically sterilized and certified had ever been permitted to stain his super-aesthetic soul. As he came forward, he gazed at the long-limbed man on the big bay horse with a curious eagerness, as though he were considering a strange and interesting creature that could scarcely be held to belong to the human race. "Professor Parkhill," said Phil coolly, "you were saying that you had never seen a genuine cowboy in his native haunt. Permit me to introduce a typical specimen, Mr. Honorable Patches. Patches, this is Professor Parkhill." "Phil," murmured Kitty, "how can you?" The Professor was gazing at Patches as though fascinated. And Patches, his weather-beaten face as grave as the face of a wooden Indian, stared back at the Professor with a blank, open-mouthed and wild-eyed expression of rustic wonder that convulsed Phil and made Kitty turn away to hide a smile. "Howdy! Proud to meet up with you, mister," drawled the typical specimen of the genus cowboy. And then, as though suddenly remembering his manners, he leaped to the ground and strode awkwardly forward, one hand outstretched in greeting, the other holding fast to Stranger's bridle rein, while the horse danced and plunged about with reckless indifference to the polite intentions of his master. The Professor backed fearfully away from the dangerous looking horse and the equally formidable-appearing cowboy. Whereat Patches addressed Stranger with a roar of savage wrath.