I’m so ignorant,” sighed Molly.

“You don’t need to be dumb. You just think before you speak. You’re such a pretty little mouse that it’ll become you. I don’t care for gabby girls, myself. An’ I never seen a man who did, if he was in earnest.”

Molly was silent enough for the next long stretch. She watched a sunrise that made her think how beautiful the world was and how little she had seen, hidden down there in the green brakes. But she reproved herself for that. From her porch she could see the sun set in the great valley when the Diamond sheered abruptly down into the Cibeque, and nothing could have excelled that. And what could be better than the wooded canyons, deep and gray and green, with their rushing streams? But this open range took her breath. Here was the cattle country—what Mr. See had called the free range, and which riders like her brother Arch and Seth Haverly regarded as their own. Yet was it not a shame to fence that magnificent rolling land of green? For a moment Molly understood what it meant to be a range-rider, to have been born on a horse. She sympathized with Arch and Seth. A barbed-wire fence, no matter how far away, spoiled the freedom of that cedared grassy land.

“Wal, lass, thar’s the smoke of Flag,” said Mrs. See. “Way down in the corner. Long ways yet. But we’re shore gettin’ there.”

“Smoke,” said Molly, dreamily. “Are they burnin’ brush?”

“Haw! Haw! That smoke comes from the railroad an’ the sawmill.”

From there on the miles were long, yet interesting, almost every one of them, with herds of cattle wearing different brands, with ranches along the road, with the country appearing to spread and grow less cedared. Ten miles out of Flagerstown Mr. See pointed to a distant ridgetop, across which a new fence strung, startlingly clear against the sky. It gave Molly a pang.

“Traft’s drift fence, I reckon,” said See. “An’ I’d almost rather have this a sheep range!”

For all her poor memory, Molly remembered Flagerstown—the black timbered mountain above it, the sawmill with its pile of yellow lumber, the gray cottages on the outskirts, and at last the thrilling long main street, with buildings that looked wonderful to her. Mr. See remarked with satisfaction that the time was not much past four o’clock. He drove straight down this busy thoroughfare. Molly was all eyes.

“Hyar we are,” said Mr. See, halting before a pretentious brick building. “This is the new hotel, Molly. Now, wife, make the best of our good trip in.