hat from Clarence's forehead and looked into his lowering face. With his
hand still on the boy's head he turned him round to the others, and said
quietly,--

"Suthin of a pup, eh?"

"You bet," they responded.

The voice was not unkindly, although the speaker had thrown his lower
jaw forward as if to pronounce the word "pup" with a humorous suggestion
of a mastiff. Before Clarence could make up his mind if the epithet
was insulting or not, the man put out his stirruped foot, and, with a
gesture of invitation, said, "Jump up."

"But Susy," said Clarence, drawing back.

"Look; she's making up to Phil already."

Clarence looked. Susy had crawled out of the mesquite, and with her
sun-bonnet hanging down her back, her curls tossed around her face,
still flushed with sleep, and Clarence's jacket over her shoulders, was
gazing up with grave satisfaction in the laughing eyes of one of the men
who was with outstretched hands bending over her. Could he believe his
senses? The terror-stricken, willful, unmanageable Susy, whom he would
have translated unconsciously to safety without this terrible ordeal of
being awakened to the loss of her home and parents at any sacrifice
to himself--this ingenuous infant was absolutely throwing herself with
every appearance of forgetfulness into the arms of the first new-comer!
Yet his perception of this fact was accompanied by no sense of
ingratitude. For her sake he felt relieved, and with a boyish smile