e let me
know when you are ready to have me come in."

His speech was so precise and his manner so perfect that Bertha was
puzzled and a little embarrassed by them. It seemed abnormal to have a
hired servant so polished, so thoughtful. She dressed hurriedly, while
the Captain yawned and talked between his yawning. "That yellow chap is
sure handy. I wish I'd had him before; 'twould have saved you a power o'
work and worry. Did ye sleep last night?"

"Not very well. I hope you did. You can't complain of the bunk."

"'Tis luxurious--'tis so! But there's nothing like the west side of
Colorado Avenue, after all, or a bed of pine boughs beside a roaring
mountain stream. 'Twas a fine little supper Ben gave us last night."

The level lands awed and depressed the mountain girl. They seemed to
type the flat and desolate spiritual world into which she was entering,
and the ride seemed interminable, carrying her every hour farther from
the scenes and sounds to which her love clung. She was bitterly
homesick, and nothing seemed to promise comfort. She gazed with
lack-lustre eyes on the towns and rivers along the way, and she entered
the great inland metropolis by the lake with dread and a deepening sense
of her inexperience and youth.

On the neighboring track stood the return sleepers headed for the hills,
and she acknowledged a wild desire to take her place among the jocund
folk who stood on the observation-platform exchanging good-byes with
friends. Thunderous, smothering, and vast the city seemed as they drove
through it on their way to the hotel, and upon reaching her room she
flung herself down on her bed and sobbed in a frenzy of homesickness.

Haney, who had never before perceived a tear on her face, was startled,
and stood in puzzled pain looking down at her, while the tactful Lucius
went about the unpacking of the trunks, confident that the shower would
soon be over.

"What's the ail of it?" asked the Captain. "Tell me, darlin'. Are ye
sick?"

She shook her head from side to side, like a suffering and weary child,
and made no further answer.

CHAPTER XV

MART'S VISIT TO HIS SISTER

Bertha woke next morning with a sense of weariness and desolation still
at her heart, but she dressed and went to breakfast with Haney at an
hour so early that the dining-room was nearly empty. Lucius, with quiet
insistence upon the importance of his employers, had secured a place at
a window overlooking the lake, and was g