ain't it?" he commented, as he looked where she
pointed. "I'd prefer the Eagle House to that."

"I love it out here," she said. "I helped plant the trees."

"Did you? Then I want the place. I want everything your pretty hands
planted."

"Oh, rats!" was her reproving comment, and it made him laugh at his own
sentimental speech.

The ranch house stood at the foot of the mesa near a creek that came out
of a narrow gorge and struck out upon the flat valley. It was a little
house--a shack merely, surrounded by a few out-buildings, all looking as
temporary as an Indian encampment, but there were trees--thriftily
green--and some stacks of grain to testify to the energy and good
husbandry of the owner.

Mrs. Gilman was lying in a corner room, close to the stream which
rippled through the little orchard, and its gentle murmur had been a
comfort to her--it carried her back to her home in Oxford County (State
of Maine), where her early girlhood had been spent. At times it seemed
that she was in the little, old, gray house in the valley, and that her
father's sharp voice might come at any moment to break her delicious
drowse.

Her breakdown had been caused as much by her mental turmoil as by her
overtaxing duties. She was confronted by a mighty temptation (through
her daughter) at a time when she was too weak and too ill to carry
forward her ordinary duties. To urge this marriage upon Bertha would be
to bring it about. That she knew, for the girl had said, "I'll do it if
you say so, mother."

"I don't want you to do it if you'd rather not," had been her weak
answer.

Bertie entered quietly, in a singularly mature, almost manly way, and
bending to her mother, asked cordially, "Well, how are you to-day?"

The sick woman took her daughter's hand and drew it to her tear-wet
cheek. "Oh, my baby! I can't bear to leave you now."

"Don't talk that way, mother. You're not going to leave me. The doctor
is coming out to see you, and everything is going all right at the
house, so don't you worry. You set to work to get well. That's your
little stunt. I'll look after the rest of it."

Bertie had never been one to bestow caresses, even on her parents, and
her only sign of deep feeling now lay in the tremble of her voice. She
drew her hand away, and putting her arm about her mother's neck patted
her cheek. "Cassie's doing well," she said, abruptly, "and the girls are
fine. They brace right up to the situation, and--and everybody's