"When the year was up I had saved $212 at regular cowboy wages and would accept no more, though Jordan begged me to take 'sunthun decent.'
"I came West, learned a little of mining--how to hold and hit a drill--in Colorado, then took a run up into Montana, came down across Idaho and finally reached this place. Liking the ways of things here I went to work. I have not missed a dozen shifts in three years."
Browning chuckled at the story, and when Sedgwick ceased he said:
"Isn't it jolly queer that we have been thrown together? My home was in Devonshire, England. My step-father was a merchant who finally became a half banker and half broker. When I was a little kid my mother died, and my father after a while married a widow who had a little daughter five years younger than myself. My father died, and my stepmother married a man named Hamlin.
"When I became twenty-two years old, my step-father wanted me to marry this little girl. I declined, first, because she seemed to me a sister, and second, I was head and ears in love with the step-daughter of the village barrister. The girl was my sister's running mate, so to speak, and though I had never said one word of love to her, my heart was on the lowest level in the dust at her feet. It was, by Jove!
"In those days I was a bit wild, I guess. I did not get out of school with much honor. I used to ride steeple-chase and hurdle races and dance all night. Sometimes, too, I had a scrap, and was careless about the money I spent. The old barrister--his name was Jenvie--believed I was the worst kid in the United Kingdom. One evening Rose Jenvie--her real name was Leighton, she was my glory, you know--had been visiting my foster-sister, and remaining until after dark, I walked home with her. It was a starlit night in summer, and we talked as we walked as young people do. The gate to the path leading up to her house was open, and I continued to walk by her side until we were almost at the door, when the 'Governor' sprang up from a bench on the little lawn, where he had been sitting, and, rudely seizing his step-daughter by the arm, broke out with a torrent of insulting reproaches that she should dare to be walking alone at night by the side of the most worthless scapegrace in all England.