really gone around a little circle. I've seen
just enough of flying fishes to hanker after Mandalay, just enough of
Spaniards to long for a sight of Spain. But they've shipped me home
and here I am anchored. Here I shall stay until that surplus
materializes; and you know in our country we have neither coal nor oil
nor iron."

"But they tell me that you are to teach the school," she said.

"For which I am grateful," I answered. "Twenty dollars a month is the
salary, and school keeps for six months, so I shall earn the large sum
of $120 a year."

"But your pension?"

"With my pension I shall be a nabob in Six Stars. Anywhere else I
should cut a very poor figure. But after all, this is the best place,
for is there any place where the skies are bluer; is there any place
where the grass is greener; is there any place where the storms are
wilder than over our mountains?"

"Sometimes I would say in Kansas," the girl answered. "Here the world
seems to end at the top of the mountain. It is hard to picture
anything beyond that. Out there you raise yourself on tiptoe, and you
see the world rolling away for miles and miles, and it seems to have no
ending."

"I suppose you will not be able to endure your imprisonment. Some day
you will go back to Kansas."

"Some day--perhaps," she laughed. "But now I am a true Black Logger.
Look at my gown."

It was the gray Dunkard dress--the concession to her uncle's beliefs on
worldliness. It was the first time I had noticed it.

"That is not the garb of Black Log," I said. "It was designed long ago
in Germany, after patterns from Heaven."

"And designed by men," said Mary, laughing; "forced by them on a sex
which wears ribbons as naturally as a bird does feathers."

"In other words, when you came to live with your pious uncle, he picked
you?"

"Exactly," she said; "but I submitted humbly. I came here, as I
supposed, a fairly good Christian, with an average amount of piety and
an average number of faults. My worldliness shocked my uncle, and
being a peaceful person, I let him pick me. But I rebelled at the
bonnet--spare me from one of those coal-scuttles--I'll go to the stake
first."

In her defiance she swung her own straw hat wildly around on the
string. Pausing, she smoothed out the gray gown and eyed it critically.

"Was such a thing ever intended for a woman to wear!" she exclaimed.

"For most women, surely not," said I. "Few could carry that handicap