multiplied his army pay many times over by a successful venture in cattle,
the scheme of Judith’s convent education was put through by the major’s
wife, who had kept her New England conscience, the discomforts of frontier
posts notwithstanding.

So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she was
eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this time
knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt that
duty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate start
in life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of the
rod.





VII


Chugg Takes The Ribbons


Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented
himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His mien
combined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage that
Peter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospective
passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of "take
it or leave it." Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady
consented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that one
might have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.