low. Yet he had never felt so toward
the little man before.

"I have a special-delivery letter for you which came this afternoon.
While you read it I'll go out to the gate and speak to the Ekblads,
coming yonder."

Jerry read her letter--the one Eugene had written after his conference
with Jerusha Darby in the rose-arbor. In it he had been faithful to the
old woman's smallest demands, but the message itself was a masterpiece.
It was gracefully written, for Eugene Wellington's penmanship was art
itself; and gracefully worded, and it breathed the perfumes of that
lovely "Eden" on every page.

Jerry closed her eyes for a moment in the midst of the reading, and the
wind-swept cemetery and all the summer-seared valley of the Sage Brush
vanished. The Macphersons; Ponk; Thelma Ekblad in the automobile by the
cemetery gate, holding something in her arms, and her fair-haired
brother, Paul; Joe Thomson (why Joe?)--all were nothing. Before her eyes
all was Eugene--Eugene and "Eden." Then she read on to the end. One
reading was enough. When York came back she was sitting with the letter
neatly folded into its envelope again, lying in her lap.

York had a shrewd notion of what that letter contained, but there was
nothing in Jerry's face by which to judge of its effect on her. Two
things he was learning about her--one, that she didn't tell all she
knew, after the manner of most frivolous-minded girls; the other, that
she didn't tell anything until she was fully ready to do so. He admired
both traits, even though they baffled him. In his own pocket was Jerusha
Darby's letter, also specially delivered. He sat down by Jerry and
waited for her to speak.

"Were those the people we saw on the south border of 'Kingussie'?" she
asked.

"Yes," York replied.

"Do they interest you?" she questioned.

"Very much."

"Why?" Jerry was killing something--time, or thought.

"Because, as I told you the other day, the same life problems come to
all grades. And life problems are always interesting," York declared.

"Has Thelma Ekblad a blowout farm, too?" Jerry's face was serious, but
her eyes betrayed her mood.

"Better a blowout farm than a blowout soul," York thought. "No. I wonder
what she would do with it if she had," he said, aloud.

"Just what I am doing, no doubt, since all of us, 'Colonel's lady and
Judy O'Grady,' are alike. Tell me more about her," Jerry demanded.

"She's talking against time now, I know, but I'll tell her a