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At the end of four weeks Van Brunt came home; a gentleman—oh, most certainly a gentleman, always; never less than that—but looking strangely ill and out of countenance. He was much thinner than when he went away, and much less sunburnt, and he had forgotten most of the matters which had taken him to Fort Worth.

The child, who for days back had scouted continually the long box-elder avenue leading up from the main trail, met the buckboard far down below the big gate. Charley stopped the galloping ponies with an arm thrown out across the driver’s hands, lifted the small courier and hugged her to his heart and kissed her.

“Did she think Daddy had just run away and left them all? Well, Daddy was very busy; he—he had such a lot of tiresome business.” And, reaching down into his vest pocket, Van Brunt brought out and gave to Hilda a five-dollar gold piece.

In silence and in some apprehension she looked at the coin lying in her palm—as unavailable to her, as valueless in her eyes, as a yellow button. He had given it as though it were a precious thing, and Hilda just glimpsed the terrible suggestion that it might have been offered instead of a doll. No, no—that could not be—that was intolerable! She pushed the idea away from her as she sat so quiet-seeming to the careless eye, but in truth in such a tumult of choking emotion, upon her father’s knee.