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 as grave as before, but the glimmer of a smile in his shrewd gray eyes. He moved over: Sid Coburn, suddenly and keenly interested in the traveller's method, accepted the invitation, noting, as he seated himself, that the adventurer was going without sack, satchel or paper bag.

"I reckon you're only goin' a station or two—I see you're travellin' light," Sid ventured.

"I rather expect a station will be as far as I'll get on this train. Luggage would be such a nuisance, you know, when they come to chuck me off."

"Well, you take it purty easy," Coburn said, looking at him with the crude, direct impertinence of his kind, up and down and all over, taking in the details so thoroughly he would be able to describe his marks a year from that day.

Between twenty-five and thirty, Coburn judged him to be, a man who would stand medium height, and weigh about a hundred and fifty-seven. Looked like an out-doors man, and was dressed in a sort of half-and-half style, like a country banker or a brand-inspector, or one of that kind, ready to hop a horse and take a sashay out on business any time. Good-looking, clean-heeled chap, an indefinable air about him that made a man feel he'd had something in his time, or was going to come into it after a while. Black hair, cut short; complexion fair where he wasn't tanned; good-sized nose, thin in the nostrils and flaring, like a blood-horse. A hard-mouthed man, Coburn judged, and a proud one, from the way he lifted his chin and carried it high, like a headstrong horse under a check-rein.