and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler
than to tease your grandfather."

"She does not tease me--I have not shed a tear! That was not the sound
of my weeping!" he declared facetiously, one arm protectingly about the
little sobbing figure.

"He does not like his grandchildren to climb about him like squirrels
and wild cattle," the lady continued. Then irrelevantly, "Long stitches
were always avoided in our family. The work you last did in your sampler
has been taken out, child, and you can sew it again and to better
advantage."

"And earn your name of Penelope," said Richard Mivane.

But he was putting on his hat and evidently had some effort in prospect,
for how could he resist,--she looked so childish and appealing as she
sat before the fire, weeping those large tears, and absently preparing
to sew her sampler anew.

While Richard Mivane, by virtue of his early culture, the scanty remains
of his property, his fine-gentleman habits and traditions, and the
anomaly of his situation, was the figure of most mark at the station,
its ruling spirit was of far alien character. This was John Ronackstone,
a stanch Indian fighter; a far-seeing frontier politician; a man of
excellent native faculties, all sharpened by active use and frequent
emergencies; skilled and experienced in devious pioneer craft; and
withal infinitely stubborn, glorying in the fact of the unchangeableness
of his opinions and his immutable abiding by his first statements. After
one glance at his square countenance, his steady noncommittal black