AT TOWNSHEAD'S RANCH It was chilly and damp in the log-walled living-room of the Townshead homestead, which stood far up in a lonely valley amidst the scattered pines.

The room was also bare and somewhat comfortless, for the land was too poor to furnish its possessor with more than necessities, and Townshead not the man to improve it much.

He lay in an old leather chair beside the stove, a slender, grey-haired man with the worn look of one whose burden had been too heavy for him.

His face was thin and somewhat haggard, his long, slender hand rather that of an artist than a bush rancher, and his threadbare attire was curiously neat.

He wore among other somewhat unusual things an old red velvet jacket, and there was a little cup of black coffee and a single cigar of exceptional quality on the table beside him.
Townshead was, in fact, somewhat of an anachronism in a country whose inhabitants exhibit at least a trace of primitive and wholesome barbarity.