I've been everywhere but East since. I've been in Colorado mostly. 'Tis a good State."

"I like it—but I'd like to see the rest of the country."

"You can. If you join hands with me we'll go round the ball together."

She did not follow this lead. "I've been to Denver once—went on one of these excursion tickets."

"How did you like it there?"

"Pretty good; but I got awful tired, and the grub at the hotel was the worst ever—it was a cheap place, of course. Didn't dare to look in the door of the big places."

"You can have a whole soot of rooms at the Royal Flush—if you will."

Again she turned away. "I can't imagine anybody rich enough to live at such hotels—There's our ranch."

"Shy as a coyote, ain't it?" he commented, as he looked where she pointed. "I'd prefer the Eagle House to that."

"I love it out here," she said. "I helped plant the trees."

"Did you? Then I want the place. I want everything your pretty hands planted."

"Oh, rats!" was her reproving comment, and it made him laugh at his own sentimental speech.

The ranch house stood at the foot of the mesa near a creek that came out of a narrow gorge and struck out upon the flat valley. It was a little house—a shack merely, surrounded by a few out-buildings, all looking as temporary as an Indian encampment, but there were trees—thriftily green—and some stacks of grain to testify to the energy and good husbandry of the owner.

Mrs. Gilman was lying in a corner room, close to the stream which rippled through the little orchard, and its gentle murmur had been a comfort to her—it carried her back to her home in Oxford County (State of Maine), where her early girlhood had been spent. At times it seemed that she was in the little, old, gray house in the valley, and that her father's sharp voice might come at any moment to break her delicious drowse.

Her breakdown had been caused as much by her mental turmoil as by her overtaxing duties. She was confronted by a mighty temptation (through her daughter) at a time when she was too weak and too ill to carry forward her ordinary duties. To urge this marriage upon Bertha would be to bring it about. That she knew, for the girl had said, "I'll do it if you say so, mother."

"I don't want you to do it if you'd rather not," had been her weak answer.

Bertie entered quietly, in a singularly mature, almost manly way, and bending to her mother, asked cordially, "Well, how are you to-day?"

The sick woman took her daughter's hand and drew it to her tear-wet cheek. "Oh, my baby! I can't bear to leave you now."

"Don't talk that way, mother. You're not going to leave me. The doctor is coming out to see you, and everything is going all right at the house, so don't you worry. You set to work to get well. That's your little stunt. I'll look after the rest of it."

Bertie had never been one to bestow caresses, even on her parents, and her only sign of deep feeling now lay in the tremble of her voice. She drew her hand away, and putting her arm about her mother's neck patted her cheek. "Cassie's doing well," she said, abruptly, "and the girls are fine. They brace right up to the situation, and—and everybody's nice to us. I reckon a dozen of the church ladies called yesterday to ask how you were—and Captain Haney came down to-day on purpose to find out how things were going."

The sufferer's eyes opened wide. "Bert, he's with you!"

"Yes, he drove me out here," answered the girl, quietly. "He's come for an answer to his proposition. It's up to us to decide right now."

The mother broke into a whimper. "Oh, darling, I don't know what to think.