“My jacket and skirt turn water pretty well. I’ll be dry in a jiffy. It does a body good to be wet once in a while.”

The shame of his action remained; but a closer friendship was established, and as he took off the coat and handed it back to her, he again apologized. “I feel like a pig. I don’t see how I came to do it. The thunder and the chill scared me, that’s the truth of it. You hypnotized me into taking it. How wet you are!” he exclaimed, remorsefully. “You’ll surely take cold.”

“I never take cold,” she returned. “I’m used to all kinds of weather. Don’t you bother about me.”

Topping a low divide the youth caught a glimpse of the range to the southeast, which took his breath. “Isn’t that superb!” he exclaimed. “It’s like the shining roof of the world!”

“Yes, that’s the Continental Divide,” she confirmed, casually; but the lyrical note which he struck again reached her heart. The men she knew had so few words for the beautiful in life. She wondered whether this man’s illness had given him this refinement or whether it was native to his kind. “I’m glad he took my coat,” was her thought.

She pushed on down the slope, riding hard, but it was nearly two o’clock when they drew up at Meeker’s house, which was a long, low, stone structure built along the north side of the road. The place was distinguished not merely by its masonry, but also by its picket fence, which had once been whitewashed. Farm-wagons of various degrees of decay stood by the gate, and in the barn-yard plows and harrows—deeply buried by the weeds—were rusting forlornly away. A little farther up the stream the tall pipe of a sawmill rose above the firs.

A pack of dogs of all sizes and signs came clamoring to the fence, followed by a big, slovenly dressed, red-bearded man of sixty or thereabouts.

“Hello, Uncle Joe,” called the girl, in offhand boyish fashion. “How are you to-day?”

“Howdy, girl,” answered Meeker, gravely. “What brings you up here this time?”

She laughed. “Here’s a boarder who wants to learn how to raise cattle.”

Meeker’s face lightened. “I reckon you’re Mr. Norcross? I’m glad to see ye. Light off and make yourself to home. Turn your horses into the corral, the boys will feed ’em.”

“Am I in America?” Norcross asked himself, as he followed the slouchy old rancher into the unkempt yard. “This certainly is a long way from New Haven.”

Without ceremony Meeker led his guests directly into the dining-room, a long and rather narrow room, wherein a woman and six or seven roughly dressed young men were sitting at a rudely appointed table.

“Earth and seas!” exclaimed Mrs. Meeker. “Here’s Berrie, and I’ll bet that’s Sutler’s friend, our boarder.”

“That’s what, mother,” admitted her husband. “Berrie brought him up.”

“You’d ought ’o gone for him yourself, you big lump,” she retorted.

Mrs.