dust. It had probably come in contact with the giant's spurs as they
wrestled, for the crown was literally ripped to tatters. And when its
owner beat out the dirt and placed the hat on his head, the fiery hair
was still visible through the rents. Yet he was not downhearted, it
seemed. He leaned jauntily against a hitching post under her window and
rolled a cigarette, quite withdrawn from the crowd which was working
over his victim.

Marianne began to feel that all she had seen was an ordinary chapter in
his life; yet in the mere crossing of that street he had lost his spurs
on a bet; saved a youngster from death at the risk of his own head,
battled with a monster and now rolled a cigarette cheerily complacent.
If fifty feet of his life made such a story what must a year of it be?

As though he felt her wonder above him, he raised his head in the act of
lighting his cigarette and Marianne was looking down into bright,
whimsical blue eyes. She was utterly unconscious of it at the moment but
at the sight of that happy face and all the dust-dimmed finery of the
cavalier, Marianne involuntarily smiled. She knew what she had done the
moment he grinned in response and began to whistle, and whistle he did,
keeping the rhythm with the sway of his head:

"At the end of the trail I'll be weary riding
But Mary will wait with a smile at the door;
The spurs and the bit had been chinking and chiding
But the end of the trail--"

Marianne stepped back from the window with the blood tingling in her
face. She was terribly ashamed, for some reason, because she knew the
words of that song.