becomingly upon her temples.

"Wonder what color her hair is, anyway," he observed inadvertently,
before he was wide enough awake to put the seal of silence on his
musings.

"Hunh?"

"I asked when those banana fritters are coming up," lied Ford, getting
out of bed and yawning so that his swollen jaw hurt him, and relapsed
into his usual taciturnity, which was his wall of defense against
Sandy's inquisitiveness.

He ate his breakfast almost in silence, astonishing Sandy somewhat by
not complaining of the excess of soda in the biscuits. Ford was inclined
toward fastidiousness when he was sober--a trait which caused men to
suspect him of descending from an upper stratum of society; though just
when, or just where, or how great that descent had been, they had no
means of finding out. Ford, so far as his speech upon the subject was
concerned, had no existence previous to his appearance in Montana, five
or six years before; but he bore certain earmarks of a higher
civilization which, in Sandy's mind, rather concentrated upon a
pronounced distaste for soda-yellowed bread, warmed-over coffee, and
scorched bacon. That he swallowed all these things and seemed not to
notice them, struck Sandy as being almost as remarkable as his
matrimonial adventure.

When he had eaten, Ford buttoned himself into his overcoat, pulled his
moleskin cap well down, and went out into the storm without a word to
Sandy, which was also unusual; it was Ford's custom to wash the dishes,