CHAPTER XVIII.
DOCTOR BYRNE ANALYSES In the room which had been assigned to his use Doctor Randall Byrne sat down to an unfinished letter and began to write.
"Dinner has interrupted me, my dear Loughburne.

I have dined opposite Miss Cumberland--only the two of us at a great table--with a wide silence around us--and the Chinese cook padding to and fro from the kitchen.

Have I told you of that room?
No, I believe that I have made no more than casual mention of my environment here, for reasons which are patent.

But to-night I wished that you might look in upon the scene.
Along the walls hang a rope with which Mr.Cumberland won a roping and tieing contest in his youth--a feat upon which he prides himself highly; at another place hang the six-shooters of a notorious desperado, taken from his dead body; there is the sombrero of a Mexican guerilla chief beside the picture of a prize bull, and an oil painting of Mr.
Cumberland at middle age adjoins an immense calendar on which is portrayed the head of a girl in bright colours--a creature with amazing quantities of straw-coloured hair.

The table itself is of such size that it is said all the guests at a round-up--a festival of note in these barbaric regions--can be easily seated around it.