Surrounded by an atmosphere of sobriety, for even at that early date the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon Kansas, he became by and by of necessity a hard working farmer, tilling the soil from morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt.
There are not many women on the prairies now. Then they were even more scarce. It was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves upon Cyclona. He fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from.
Personally he would consider the topsy turvy house a good and sufficient reason for continued absence, but according to his English ideas a girl should love her own roof whether it was right side up or inverted.
The thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of night skies scattered thick with dusty stars.
His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination.
He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious dwelling to behold her as she came back home.
On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching her throw the saddle on her broncho, fasten the straps, leap into the saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan came out of the topsy turvy house and found him.
"Walk with me awhile," implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of the girl.
Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him.
"Who is the girl?" asked Hugh.