A somewhat awkward constraint fell upon the three so left, which Miss Ogden dispelled by turning her horse toward Highwood, and riding on slightly ahead of the Honorable Arthur and his father. The earl gazed admiringly at her slim back.
"By gad, she's a beauty, Arthur, my deah boy, and she sits her horse perfectly."
"She's an American," remarked the young man, aggressively.
"She's beautiful enough to be English," retorted the earl, warmly. He spurred forward and rode at her right hand. The Honorable Arthur rather sulkily closed up on the left.
"I was just saying to Arthur, Miss Ogden, that he could go on the round-up and jolly welcome as long as you have promised to show me the country. I am most deeply interested in our Canadian possessions, you know," said the earl.
She shot him a glance from under the black lashes of her gray eyes which made the Earl of Rigby fairly gasp.
"I shall try my best to keep your lordship from being bored while Mr.
St. John is away," she said, sweetly.
It was two weeks later, or to be perfectly exact, two weeks and four days later, that a half-breed was sent down to the Morgan round-up, twenty-five miles west of Calgary, with a telegram for St. John. The Honorable Arthur was so dirty, tired, dusty, and sunburnt that the half-breed had difficulty in picking him out from the rest of the dirty, tired, dusty, and sunburnt round-up crew.
The sight of the telegram filled the young man with an indefinable fear, and the paper fluttered in his trembling hand like a withered leaf on a windshaken bough.
"Meet the 2:40 from Macleod at Calgary. Will be on train. Most important.
RIGBY."
His swollen tongue and parched lips got drier, his cracked and tanned skin paled as he read and reread the message. Suddenly a joyous thought came to him. "The old boy's relented sure, and wants me to go back with him," he told himself over and over. He thrust his few things into the one portmanteau he had brought with him and made such good time going the twenty-five miles into Calgary that he had been pacing up and down the station platform for ten minutes when the train pulled in.
The Earl of Rigby, who had been hanging over the vestibule rail of the observation car, swung himself lightly down and cordially grasped his son's hand. The Honorable Arthur was struck afresh by the good looks and youthfulness of his aristocratic father.
"By Jove, Arthur, I'm glad to see you got my telegram, and I'm glad you got here in time. What? No, you won't need your portmanteau. The truth is," he gave an infectious laugh, "the Countess of Rigby--she was Miss Lily Ogden until last night, my deah boy--and I are on our way to England, and we couldn't leave the country without seeing you again. Won't you step into the coach and speak to her?"
FOOTNOTE:
[54] Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
GEORGE LEE BURTON
George Lee Burton, magazinest, was born at Danville, Kentucky, April 17, 1868. He was fitted at the Louisville Rugby School for the University of Virginia, from which he was graduated, after which he returned to Louisville, and studied law in the University of Louisville. Upon his graduation from that institution he was admitted to the bar, and he has since practiced his profession at Louisville with success. Mr. Burton began to write some years ago, contributing short-stories and sketches to the eastern periodicals. _The Century_ published his clever story, _As Seen By His Bride_; and _Ainslee's Magazine_ printed his _The Training of the Groom_, _The Deferred Proposal_, _Cupid's Impromptu_, and several other stories. His work for _The Saturday Evening Post_, however, has been his most noteworthy performance. For that great weekly he has written: _Getting a Start at Sixty_ (published anonymously); _The Making of a Small Capitalist_, _A Fresh Grip_, _A Rebuilt Life_, and _Tackling Matrimony_, the last of which titles appeared in two parts in _The Post_ for November 23 and November 30, 1912, was exceedingly well done. He has recently re-written _Tackling Matrimony_, greatly developing the story-part, and more than doubling its length, for the Harper's, who will issue it in book form early in the spring of 1913. Mr. Burton is a bachelor who has won wide reputation as a writer upon various phases of matrimonial mixups. He also has a certain sympathy with those who waste their youth in riotous living, but who win their true positions in the world after all seems lost.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Burton to the Author; _Outing_ (May, 1900).
AFTER PRISON--HOME[55]
[From _A Rebuilt Life_ (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 23, 1912)]
"Well, sir, when I got out I was shipped back to my own town, or rather the town from which I had been sent up. I was born five hundred miles from there; but my people had died when I was young and I had drifted in there when I was only sixteen years old--I guess that makes it my town after all. Now, at thirty-five I was back there from the pen and I stayed there.
"Maybe that was a mistake. I guess it was harder for me; but I had that much fight left in me. I wanted to show people that there was still some man in me, even if I had spent ten years in the pen that I deserved to spend there. Besides, I wouldn't like to start off fresh in a new place and build up a little, and just as I got to going have somebody from my home town come along and tell everybody that respected me that I was a murderer and an ex-convict and a lowdown sort of nobody.
"I believe after all I'd rather start in as I did, back where they thought that about me to begin with, and build up fresh from that. I wanted to live down the killing and those ten years--and I believe I've sorter done it. It may sound foolish, but--though I don't excuse all that, remember--I have got to sorter respect myself again, and I tell you it feels good!
"They didn't have prison reform in that state then, with an employment officer and a job all ready to help a poor devil start out again when he got back to freedom. They gave me a suit of clothes and five dollars and shipped me back to the town I came from, then turned me loose as an ex-convict to hump for myself like the other "exes,"
branded by those years of living in there.
"It certainly seemed strange to see the place again. There had been many changes in those years. I put up at one of these twenty-five-cents-a-night men's hotels, and took fifteen-cent meals--skipping one every day to make my five dollars last longer; and I commenced looking for a job.
"There didn't seem any need of more help anywhere. I tried many of my old acquaintances to see if I could get a place--I did not seem to have any friends left! I found ten years in the pen seemed to wipe out the claim of being even an acquaintance with most of them. They all looked at me curiously, as if I was a different brand of man--a cannibal, or Eskimo, or something.
"I'd rather they wouldn't have showed so plain they thought me dangerous or worse; yet I'd have swallowed that if they had only given me work. They didn't though; some of them weren't as cold with me as others, but none of them had anything for me.
"Of course I tackled all sorts of strangers, too, for work; but usually they didn't have any--and when they had they wanted references. I couldn't blame them; I guess I had a sort of pasty face and hangdog look.
"They had such a habit of asking: 'Where did you work last?'
"'I've been away a long time--have not worked here for several years,'
I would say.
"'Where did you work while you were away?' came next.
"'I worked at broom-making part of the time,' I got to answering.
"Then, like as not, the boss would look at me suspiciously and say: 'No, I don't believe I need you just now; if I do I will let you know.
Where do you live?"
"When I gave the number of the bum lodging house he would look as if that settled it; he had known all along I wasn't any good. And I felt so shamed and low down all the time I looked like he was right.
"Five dollars don't last very long, even with two meals a day. I got work one day on a wrecker's force, tearing down an old building; but the foreman drove his men hard and I wasn't used to real work anyway.
I couldn't stand up to it, and--I'm ashamed to tell it even now--I fainted about four o'clock that afternoon.
"Another day I got a place with the gang working repairs on the street-railroad tracks; but the man in charge said I was too slow and not strong enough--had better get some different kind of work. As if I hadn't tried everything I could! He didn't pay me for a full day either--said I wasn't worth it; and the worst was that I knew he was right. I was about at the end of my rope when my money gave out, and I was looking so weak and shamefaced that I didn't stand any sort of a chance. I got to feeling desperate.
"I remember that about this time I went in to answer an ad--'Man wanted as porter in well-established wholesale drug house.' The head of the place was a mild-mannered old man, who sat in the back office, but who always looked over the new men before they were employed. He began as usual:
"'Where did you work last?'
"'With the street-railroad gang,' I answered.
"'U-um! How long?'
"'One day,' I told him.
"'Ah!' he said, as if he had discovered something--'and before that?'
"'With a house-wrecking gang on Flint Street.'
"'Yes--how long there?'