"Columbine!... So they named me--those miners who found me--a baby--lost
in the woods--asleep among the columbines." She spoke aloud, as if the
sound of her voice might convince her.

So much of the mystery of her had been revealed that day by the man she
had always called father. Vaguely she had always been conscious of some
mystery, something strange about her childhood, some relation never
explained.

"No name but Columbine," she whispered, sadly, and now she understood a
strange longing of her heart.

Scarcely an hour back, as she ran down the Wide porch of White Slides
ranch-house, she had encountered the man who had taken care of her all
her life. He had looked upon her as kindly and fatherly as of old, yet
with a difference. She seemed to see him as old Bill Belllounds, pioneer
and rancher, of huge frame and broad face, hard and scarred and
grizzled, with big eyes of blue fire.

"Collie," the old man had said, "I reckon hyar's news. A letter from
Jack.... He's comin' home."

Belllounds had waved the letter. His huge hand trembled as he reached to
put it on her shoulder. The hardness of him seemed strangely softened.
Jack was his son. Buster Jack, the range had always called him, with
other terms, less kind, that never got to the ears of his father. Jack
had been sent away three years ago, just before Columbine's return from
school. Therefore she had not seen him for over seven years. But she
remembered him well--a big, rangy boy, handsome and wild, who had made