on. Mrs. Norton was somewhere in the house and
Norton had gone down to the bunkhouse for a talk with the men--Hollis
and Nellie could see him, sitting on a bench in the shade of the eaves,
the other men gathered about him.

Below the broad level that stretched away from the ranchhouse sank the
big basin, sweeping away to the mountains. Miles into the distance the
Circle Bar cattle could be seen--moving dots in the center of a great,
green bowl. To the right Razor-Back ridge loomed its bald crest upward
with no verdure saving the fringe of shrubbery at its base; to the left
stretched a vast plain that met the distant horizon that stretched an
interminable distance behind the cottonwood. Except for the moving dots
there was a total absence of life and movement in the big basin. It
spread in its wide, gradual, downward slope, bathed in the yellow
sunshine of the new, mellow season, peacefully slumberous, infinitely
beautiful.

Many times had Hollis sat in the gallery watching it, his eyes
glistening, his soul stirred to awe. Long since had he ceased regretting
the glittering tinsel of the cities of his recollection; they seemed
artificial, unreal. When he had first gazed out over the basin he had
been oppressed with a sensation of uneasiness. Its vastness had appalled
him, its silence had aroused in him that vague disquiet which is akin to
fear. But these emotions had passed. He still felt awed--he would always
feel it, for it seemed that here he was looking upon a section of the
world in its primitive state; that in forming this world the creator had
been in his noblest mood--so far did the lofty mountains, the wide,
sweeping valleys, the towering buttes, and the mighty canyons dwarf the
flat hills and the puny shallows of the land he had known. But he was no
longer appalled; disquietude had been superseded by love.

It all seemed to hold some mystery for him--an alluring, soul-stirring
mystery. The tawny mountains, immutable guardians of the basin, whose
peaks rose somberly in the twilight glow--did they hold it? Or was it
hidden in the basin, in the great, green sweep that basked in the
eternal sunlight?

Perhaps there was no mystery. Perhaps he felt merely the romance that
would inevitably come to one who deeply appreciated the beauty of a land
into which he had come so unwillingly? For romance was here.

He turned his head slightly and looked at the girl who sat beside him.
She also was looking out over the basin