cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from Noches
on the stage.

From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the
dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing through
the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a half-grown
youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was changing hands
from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the delivery window
was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the family mail and that
of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a folded paper evidently torn
from a notebook.

"This here is for you, Phyl," he explained.

She pushed it back. "I'm too busy to read it."

"It's from Tom," he further volunteered.

"Is it?"

She took the paper quietly but with a swift, repressed passion, tore it
across, folded the pieces together, rent them again, and tossed the
fragments through the window to the floor.

"Do you want the mail for the Gordons, too, Mr. Purdy?" she coolly asked
the next in line over the tow head of Bud.

The boy grinned and ducked from his place through the door. Through the
open window there drifted to her presently the sound of a smothered
curse, followed by the rapid thud of a horse's hoofs. Phyllis did not