case, but all that made no difference to Phil's vision--he could see her
just the same.

Kitty had been very kind to Phil at the celebration. But Kitty was
always kind--nearly always. But in spite of her kindness the cowboy felt
that she had not, somehow, seemed to place a very high valuation upon
the medal he had won in the bronco-riding contest. Phil himself did not
greatly value the medal; but he had wanted greatly to win that
championship because of the very substantial money prize that went with
it. That money, in Phil's mind, was to play a very important part in a
long cherished dream that was one of the things that Phil Acton did not
talk about. He had not, in fact, ridden for the championship at all, but
for his dream, and that was why it mattered so much when Kitty seemed so
to lack interest in his success.

As though his subconscious mind directed the movement, the young man
looked away from Kitty's home to the distant mountain ridge where the
night before on the summit of the Divide he had met the stranger. All
the way home the cowboy had wondered about the man; evolving many
theories, inventing many things to account for his presence, alone and
on foot, so far from the surroundings to which he was so clearly
accustomed. Of one thing Phil was sure--the man was in trouble--deep
trouble. The more that the clean-minded, gentle-hearted lad of the great
out-of-doors thought about it, the more strongly he felt that he had
unwittingly intruded at a moment that was sacred to the stranger--sacred
because the man was fighting one of those battles that every man must
fight--and fight alone. It was this feeling that had kept the young man
from speaking of the incident to anyone--even to the Dean, or to
"Mother," as he called Mrs. Baldwin. Perhaps, too, this feeling was the
real reason for Phil's sense of kinship with the stranger, for the