offer once more. Here's two hundred clear-I'll make it two-fifty just to show you I don't hold a grudge and you sign that deed to-day. If you won't, I warn you it ain't worth while trying to hang on, for your chance ain't worth the blat of a dogy if I fight you. You've got the two years yet, but you couldn't prove up if you had ten. I suppose if you could squeeze a thousand out of me you'd turn it over; but you'll never get it. I'd rather use a thousand beatin' you to it. This sort of buttin'-in by tenderfeet will hurt the land business if we let you keep it up."

Warren made no reply to this, but strode gloomily out, and went off to work.

A month later the paper at the county seat again published the announcement of Jim Warren's intention to make final proof. Three of the witnesses were the same; in place of the fourth appeared the name of E. M. Graham.

"Judge Graham's nephew? Why, that lily-livered stiff hasn't been within ten miles of here since Buck called him in that card game six years ago. Then he was in Wyoming nigh two," exploded Iliff when one of his boys showed him the paper. "We'll soon queer his evidence if he don't do it himself first."

When the day for Warren's second attempt to prove up came around, a big crowd flocked in to see the fun, for the fight between Iliff and his rider had become interesting. As before, As before, Pierce was the first man up. He repeated his testimony of the previous time, unshaken. When E. M. Graham was called, the crowd craned their necks for the first sight of the dissolute scapegrace; they expected considerable amusement from him, for his reputation for veracity was not of the best.

The first inkling of what was to come broke out from the rear of the room when Judge Graham's big voice roared out peremptorily:

"Come back here, girl: are you crazy?"

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Amid the angry growls of several surprised men, her testimony was taken and the case closed.

Graham fairly sputtered at what he termed the "fool brazenness" of the girl. Iliff, on the other hand, was inclined to treat the whole matter as a huge joke. With a broad grin on his red face, he sought out Warren after the office was closed.

"Well, Jim, you done me up brown to-day," said he, squinting slyly at some of the boys who stood near.

"I've been wondering just a leetle," he added innocently, "how much that plucky gal of Judge Graham's really knew about your continuous residence, as they call it. Come, now, Jim didn't she fib a bit?"

Jim's face darkened ominously, and Sam forebore further comment along that line.

"You done a good job, anyway, boy, and I'd like to shake with the first man that ever beat old Sam Iliff to anything. Good luck to you and the gal," said the cattleman, jovially, as he extended his huge fist. He was apparently sincere.

Jim Warren half lifted his hand to grasp that of his employer, but something changed his mind, and the waiting fist was ignored. He could not forebear a little smile of satisfaction. Iliff did not appear offended, but chuckled audibly as he turned and walked away. Presently he hesitated as if he had forgotten something, then came back.

"Oh, say, Warren, I just about forgot to tell you that Slim Walker filed

a contest on that claim of yours less than ten minutes ago. He says he's got six witnesses to prove you hain't resided on that place twenty-four hours at a stretch any time in the last five years. Thought maybe you'd be glad to know." With a loud guffaw the big ranchman planted himself squarely before the cowboy, his sides shaking at his own cleverness.

The satisfaction Warren had previously felt faded slowly from his face. He eyed his taunting employer for a full minute, took one hesitating step toward him-then turned on his heel and walked to his horse.

When he encountered Marian, a day or two later, on one of the trails leading to the Open Box Two ranch, he chilled the enthusiasm that had been hers since the hearing at the landoffice by telling her of the contest that was filed just at the moment of victory.

"I guess we've lost, Marian," he said listlessly, after a long silence.

"Can't anything be done, Jim? Will you have to give it up?" she inquired anxiously.

"I'm afraid so, girlie. They're sure to make the contest stick. That ends it as far as my rights are concernedthe two years I have left will do no good," answered Jim.

"Can you give it up any time—even before the contest?" asked Marian.

"Sure. I can relinquish and throw the land back to the government; that kills the contest, but I lose my chance with it then. Why?"

"Can anybody file on it then?" The girl suddenly straightened in her saddle.

"Sure. Just like it had never been taken up," he answered.

Marian's eyes brightened, and she leaned excitedly toward her comrade.

"Then I've got a scheme that will beat Sam Iliff and his contest," she whispered, elatedly.

There was a wholesome cheer that crept into the disheartened voices as they talked over her plan in undertones. His oft-repeated "No, no!" and her insistent "Yes, I will-it's the only way!" were the chief expressions that

might have reached the ears of any chance listener. Finally objections were hushed, and "the only way" seemed to be their decision. When the trail divided there was no trace of the depression that ruled them earlier in the ride.

A little later, when work was slack, Jim asked his employer for a month off.

"I've got a little work to do over at the shack," was his excuse.

Iliff stared at his man quizzically for

a moment.

"You don't look queer, Jim; but you certainly act like a blamed fool. You ain't got a bit of show to hold that claim, and haven't had since you bucked up against me that first day. Why don't you give up? The contest. will fix you, sure as thunder?"

Nobody

"It will?" Jim was smiling. "Why, of course it will. follows the rules very close, anyway, so when some fellow butts in with a contest, you ain't got a ghost of a show. Why don't you quit? You ought to know you can't fight Sam Iliff."

"Well, I think I've got a chance yet, Sam," was Warren's simple reply.

"Go on, then; be a blasted fool," exploded the cattleman, "but you'll get your eye-teeth cut. Lookee, here, Jim, I don't hold any grudge agin you, even yet-I just want that land, and I'm going to get it. But I can get it quicker and cheaper through you than to have to start all over again after fighting you off, if you'll be sensible. I made up my mind to pay you for your ginger, but I'll take that back and give you a good deal yet. I'll give you just three hundred clear to fix it up the way I want it. Say the word, and Slim will drop the fight, and you can go ahead-but remember, I want my deed first."

"No, Sam, we'll scrap it out," replied Jim, still smiling.

"Well, of all the stubborn, bullheaded lunatics, you take the cake," shouted the disgusted rancher. "But blast me, if I don't admire your spunk."

The next day, Jim unloaded a big pile of new lumber near the old shack. In a little while the framework of a neat two-roomed cottage took shape. One month later, the day preceding that set for the contest, a load of fresh, shining furniture was pulled at at the door.

Sam Iliff and two of his boys rode up as Jim tugged at a tiny range in his struggle to get it through the kitchen door. They sat their ponies and grinned at the perspiring homesteader. "Goin' in purty steep on a phony tip, ain't you, Jim?"

"Oh, I don't know, boys; I think I've got a real hunch," laughed Warren, as he paused to wipe off his dripping face.

Just then Marian Graham and the pretty little school teacher rode up and dismounted.

"What do you think of my new house, Mr. Iliff? Don't you think it's real cute?" asked Marian sweetly.

The mounted cowboys stared at her, open-mouthed.

"Your house!" they exclaimed in unison.

"My house, yes. Isn't it fine?" Iliff finally understood.

"Well, I'll be-be roped and hogtied," he sputtered, changing his usual ejaculation in polite deference to the

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ladies. Then he lapsed into silence.

"Yes," went on the girl, enthusiastically, "Jim turned the place over to me-relinquished, I think he said. I filed on it right away, and now I'm a full-fledged homesteader. Bessie is going to hold the fort while here for awhile. She'll teach the kidlets over there, and I'll fry the bacon and scrub the pans. Papa says we can get the land in fourteen months if we want to pay a dollar or so an acre. Jim says he won't mind that-if we should decide to prove up so soon," she finished, blushing rosily.

"Well, wouldn't that cork you!" exploded the big cattleman again. “Say," he yelled at his men, "if any of you bowlegged yaps had skinned me at a game like this, I'd-I'd-I'd-I don't know what in thunder I wouldn't have done.

"Jim," he roared, "if I thought for a minute you was bright enough to dig out this scheme I'd lick you with my bare hands right here; but I know you ain't, and you're too good a man to lose. Till the fourteen months is up you boss my outfit at ninety every pay-day. After that, you may be looking for a new boss," he finished, with a broad grin at Marian.

The new homesteader fled in blushing confusion into the house.

GEORGE B. STAFF.

I

DON'T know if I've done the right thing in telling you about her," said the gaunt, yellow

faced doctor, looking critically

at John Dwyer. "But when I saw you talking to the chief of the customs I was thinking about the girl-andwell-here you are, whatever comes of it."

"Is there no hope, doctor?"

Dwyer had averted his eyes from the senorita as, eased by the anodyne, she lay unconscious of his neighborhood, her white fingers clutching the dingy linen sheet spread over the camp bedstead standing in the middle of the room.

The Samboangan doctor shook his head.

"Nothing but an operation by more skillful hands than mine, and the use of certain medical necessities not to be found outside Manila Hospital, could do her any good. Unless, I may say, some untoward chance causes the tumor to burst before the inflammation spreads further. But, Dwyer, did I act wisely in bringing you?"

"It was foolish of me to come, very foolish!" returned the American in a strained voice, but little above his breath. "Why?-well-you should know. It was you who introduced us to each other!"

Shooll nodded, and stepped away to turn down the smoking lamp on the table by the head of the bed. In a furtive fashion, as if afraid of his self-control breaking, Dwyer gazed at Magdalena Estrada.

She had changed but very little since they had parted. Her flower-like face, with eyebrows and lashes dark

upon the flushed skin, was as beautiful as ever. But on her low forehead and about the graciously moulded mouth and chin he fancied there were lines now.

Sighing heavily, Dwyer passed a hand across his eyes as if shutting out memories. But his mouth tightened. He had found he could not forget.

That memorable merienda (picnic) three months-was it three years?ago, and the sudden glad, mad, raptures of mutual love at first sight. . . Their meetings in Samboangan, and then that morning rendezvous when the stars went out, and vast flocks of white birds wheeled screaming in the dawn above the swaying tree-tops; and they two stood captive in each other's arms, while from overhead great crimson blossoms fluttered down on them in a shower of dew-sparkling petals, continuous and perfumed. . . Then the abrupt end-that silence to his letters from Manila.

"Her step-father?" he exclaimed, "where is her step-father? Fuddling and fencing as usual, the drunken sot!"

"Yes. Left in the Cebu packet last night for some grand orgy there. I did him in, though, for a small handful of dollars to get things for her. God help her! Her mother died young."

"Ricardo, then! Where's that young half-caste, Ricardo, that was cutting capers round her? They were betrothed last week. I know that."

Irony and bitterness stung the young voice.

"Dwyer! Don't you misjudge her. You of all men," uttered Shooll in a low, harsh tone, and looking sharply

at him. "You may think I'm an old fool all round for trusting in human nature, yet

"She fooled me to the top of her bent."

But on the senorita moving uneasily, Shooll had held his tongue and gesticulated toward the veranda, and Dwyer slipped outside.

With conflicting emotions assailing him, he looked about. In the middle of the veranda there was an oblong table, and on it a paraffin lamp, lighting up the three inner sides. The fourth was open, facing the coast. The wall beside him was cut in two by a central passage into which opened the living rooms. About the veranda there straggled four wooden armchairs and a dilapidated bent-wood rocker; the uneven floor, with its withered plants and dried earth scattered about being hidden here and there with dirty common mats. Under the palm-leaf thatch lizards scuttled on the rafters, and round the lamp swarmed numerous moths and mosquitoes.

The general air of squalid neglect struck home to John Dwyer.

sur

It came to him as intolerable that she, Magdalena, lived in such roundings. He thought of his own luxurious home in Washington, and shivered, remembering how he had proudly and fondly pictured her there.

A light breeze swayed the scattered blinds, and brought from the surrounding woods a faint and sickly odor as of decaying flowers. Down from the hills a heavy thunder-cloud was traveling, blotting out the stars and merging sky, forest and sea into one mass of almost palpable darkness. To Dwyer's left, in the south, shone the lights of Samboangan, streaked with the fort's and anchorage's stronger illumination, and starred by Bagaca Point Light.

Dwyer sharply upbraided himself for coming up with Shooll. He had only re-opened the wound, he told himself. Better far if he had not ended his tour in the Philippines by returning via Samboangan again. He then would have had a stifled but not a

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smarting heart, and could have left it to Time to scatter oblivion upon her image.

His eye caught a glint of light from the polished shafts of rapiers, hanging in the passage, just opposite the rattans screening the doorway of Magdalena's room, amidst a medley of foils, single-sticks, masks and other paraphernalia of fencing.

Dwyer caustically reminded himself he had narrowly escaped a misalliance. The ex-fencing master to the old Spanish garrisons, his father-inlaw! His own ardor for the foils would have been gratified!

He writhed inwardly-grimaced in irony at himself. Yes, it was just as foolish of him to have had a last glimpse of her as it was of Shooll to be hankering apparently after a death bed reconciliation.

Softly the doctor came out of the senorita's room, and crossing to the table, lifted the lamp away.

"Stay here till I come back," said he in a lowered voice. "I'm going through to the sheds at the back to rout out the old hag that is supposed to nurse her. She is almost awake."

As the doctor disappeared, darkness enveloped the veranda, and the interior of the dwelling, save for the light filtering through the doorway of the sick chamber. To Dwyer there. came an overwhelming and tormenting impulse to look again-and, this time, unseen by any, upon Magdalena Estrada. But savagely he mastered himself.

He told himself this was a device of Shooll's to enlist on her behalf his emotions, stirred afresh at sight of her. But had he not already suffered torture of mind and heart?

Of a sudden he heard the dried grass on an overgrown path among the near grove of palms and mangoes rustle under approaching feet, and he moved away from the top of the steps into the deeper shade.

Some one cursing in a mixture of Spanish and English at the lack of lights, stumbled across the veranda towards the doorway of Magdalena's