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 he had taken, he had not heard a word from the outside. There might be wars and disasters making havoc in the world for all he knew. That was complete isolation, compared to which a sheep-herder's life was one of social gaiety.

A herder saw the camp mover once in a while, and heard the gossip of the range; he got the old newspapers and magazines in his turn as they circulated from wagon to wagon, and occasionally a wanderer came by, stopping at his camp for the night. Inside Galloway's fence nobody roamed. Herders and shearers on the go from job to job made the long detour that everybody else in that country took to get to Lost Cabin. The fear of a trespasser's fate was heavy over them all, far and near.

Edith was not cutting across the fenced land any more, her aunt having put a stern prohibition on such daring enterprise. Once in two weeks, Rawlins knew, she rode the thirty-five miles going and thirty-five miles return in a day to get the mail, and such little luxuries as salted peanuts and chocolates as a sort of compensative premium. He was only seven miles from the post office, in a straight line, quite an improvement over the condition of the bluffed and subjugated sheepmen on the outside. And his mail would be accumulating. He must saddle Graball one of these days and go after it.

That was his thought that morning as he tinkered around his haystacks completing a wire fence to keep off such stray animals as might wander around in the night or when he was away from home. It might be as well to go over that afternoon, for he was beginning