crowd, I reckon, from Chicago?"

"Yes--Mrs. Sellimer and her daughter, and some of their friends."

Willock whistled loudly. "And that up-and-down looking chap in the
gold nose-glasses was your brother?"

"Never thought of that," Bill exclaimed, "although he had your
name--he looked so different! But now that you've laid aside your
cowboy rigging, I guess you could sit in his class, down at the
bottom of it."

Willock was uneasy. "I was told," he observed, "and I took the
trouble to get datty on the subject, that them Sellimers--the mother
and daughter, and the herd they drift with--is of the highest
pedigree Chicago can produce. It sort of jolts me to find out that
anybody we know is kin to the bunch!"

Wilfred laughed without bitterness. "Don't let my kinship to
brother Edgerton disturb your ideal. We're so different that we
parted without saying good-by, and although I had the weakness to
imagine we might patch up old differences if we could meet here in
the desert, I suppose we'd have fallen out in a day or two--we're
so unlike. And as to Miss Sellimer--Annabel Sellimer--she is the
girl whose letters I was carrying about with me when I first saw
you. She refused me because I was as poor as herself; so you see,
the whole bunch is out of my class."

"That's good," Willock's face cleared up. "Mind you, I ain't saying
that as for me and Bill, we'd wouldn't rather sit with you in a