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Murphy. Well, that might not be a bad idea, after all. So the letter was written by the light of the camp fire. Next morning the McSweens set out for Lincoln.

The little incident seems absurdly trifling. No rhyme or reason to it; it came out of thin air; just happened. Yet it is a sphinx's riddle as inexplicable as life or gravity or the swing of the stars. Why did it occur? Why should it have occurred? What gods were asleep at the switch? Was the coyote some demon of darkness? Was Otero Mephistopheles in masquerade? Did some witch riding her broomstick against the moon hurl down a curse? A letter of casual courtesy, written by a stranger, met by accident, to a man they had never heard of in a town of whose existence they had never dreamed, changed the whole course of life for the McSweens, turned them aside from the happiness which apparently was their just due, and involved them in a strange tangle of tragedies which apparently they did not deserve. Fate crooked a beckoning finger from the Capitans, and without hesitation, blindly, blithely, they obeyed the summons.

The arrival of the McSweens in Lincoln was an event. Well-bred, well-dressed, well-educated, the couple introduced a new note into the village life. McSween's scholarly attainments gave the gossips something to roll over their tongues, and when the pretty Mrs. McSween had unpacked her trunks and appeared on the street, tricked out in gowns that were the last word in Kansas City and St. Louis fashions, she caused a flutter among the wives and daughters of the town who had never feasted their eyes on apparel of such chic and elegance. Murphy received the couple with great cordiality. McSween in a short time was comfortably settled in a newly built home, a spacious adobe of one story after the manner of the