myself that I am
always perfectly sure of," he added as he mounted. "You see I can always
depend upon myself to make a fool of myself. It was that bad place in
the fence that did it." He pulled up his horse suddenly as they were
starting. "And that reminds me; there is one thing you positively must
tell me before I can go a foot, even toward supper. How much farther is
it to the corner of this field?"

She looked at him in pretty amazement. "To the corner of this field?"

"Yes, I knew, of course, that if I followed the fence it was bound to
lead me around the field and so back to where I started. That's why I
kept on; I thought I could finish the job and get home, even if Snip did
compel me to ride the fence on foot."

"But don't you know that this is a drift fence?" she asked, her eyes
dancing with fun.

"That's what the Dean called it," he admitted. "But if it's drifting
anywhere, it's going end on. Perhaps that's why I couldn't catch the
corner."

"But there is no corner to a drift fence," she cried.

"No corner?"

She shook her head as if not trusting herself to speak.

"And it doesn't go around anything--there is no field?" Again she shook
her head.

"Just runs away out in the country somewhere and stops?"

She nodded. "It must be eighteen or twenty miles from here to the end."

"Well, of all the silly fences!" he exclaimed, looking away to the
mountain peaks toward which he had been so laboriously making his way.
"Honestly, now, do you think that is any way for a respectable fence to
act? And the Dean told me to be sure and get home before dark!"

Then they laughed together--laughed until their horses must have
wondered.

As they rode on, she explained the purpose of the drift fence, and how
it came to an end so many miles away and so far from water that the
cattle do not usually find their way around it.

"And now the magic!" he said. "You have made a most unreasonable,
unconventional and altogether foolish fence appear reasonable, proper
and perfectly sane. Please explain your coming with Snip to my relief."

"Which was also unreasonable, unconventional and altogether foolish?"
she questioned.

"Which was altogether wonderful, unexpected and delightful," he
retorted.

"It is all perfectly simple," she explained. "Being rather--" She
hesitated. "Well, rather sick of too much of nothing at all, you know, I
went over to the Cross-Triangle right after dinner to visit a little
with Stella--prof