tavern sitting-room and watched a mighty beacon of flame rising before
her, a hundred yards away. Every night this beacon made a circle of
light on the prairie, and Galbraith's Place was in the centre of the
circle. Summer and winter it burned from dusk to daylight. No hand fed
it but that of Nature. It never failed; it was a cruse that was never
empty. Upon Jen Galbraith it had a weird influence. It grew to be to
her a kind of spiritual companion, though, perhaps, she would not so have
named it. This flaming gas, bubbling up from the depths of the earth on
the lonely plains, was to her a mysterious presence grateful to her; the
receiver of her thoughts, the daily necessity in her life. It filled her
too with a kind of awe; for, when it burned, she seemed not herself
alone, but another self of her whom she could not quite understand. Yet
she was no mere dreamer. Upon her practical strength of body and mind
had come that rugged poetical sense, which touches all who live the life
of mountain and prairie. She showed it in her speech; it had a measured
cadence. She expressed it in her body; it had a free and rhythmic
movement. And not Jen alone, but many another dweller on the prairie,
looked upon it with a superstitious reverence akin to worship. A
blizzard could not quench it. A gale of wind only fed its strength. A
rain-storm made a mist about it, in which it was enshrined like a god.
Peter Galbraith could not fully understand his daughter's fascination for
this Prairie Star, as the North-West people called it. It was not
without its natural influence upon him; but he regarded it most as a
comfortable advertisement, and he lamented every day that this never-
failing gas well was not near a large population, and he still its owner.
He was one of that large family in the earth who would turn the best
things in their lives into merchandise. As it was, it brought much grist
to his mill; for he was not averse to the exercise of the insinuating
pleasures of euchre and poker in his tavern; and the hospitality which
ranchmen, cowboys, and travellers sought at his hand was often prolonged,