luego_[A] we can assure her of
that. We'll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is
our _val paraiso_."

"Our valley of paradise," she nodded, her hands reaching up to his
shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, "our home!"

His arm about her shoulders, he faced her to the window, and pointed
to the hills, asleep now in their brown winter coat behind a clear
film of smoky blue.

"I stood up there one evening, weighted down with guns and ammunition,
hunting and hunted in the most desperate game I ever played," he said.
"The sun was low over this valley, and Alamito was a gleam of white
among the autumn gold. I was tired, hungry, dusty, thirsty and sore,
and my heart was all but dead in its case. That was after you had sent
me away from the post, scorned and half despised."

"Don't rebuke me for that night now, Alan," she pleaded, turning her
pained eyes to his. "I have suffered for my injustice."

"It wasn't injustice, it was discipline, and it was good for both of
us. We must come to confidence through misunderstandings and false
charges very frequently in this life. Never mind that; I was telling
you about that evening on the side of the hill. I had been sitting
with my back to a rock, watching the brush for Mark Thorn, but I was
thinking more of you than of him. For he meant only death, and you
were life. But I thought that I had lost you that day."

She drew nearer to him as they stood, in the unequivocal consolation
of her presence, in the most comforting refutation of that sad hour's
dark forebodings.

"I thought that, until I stood up and started down the slope to go my
lone-handed way. The sun struck me in the face then, and it was yellow
over the valley, and the wind was glad. I knew then, when I looked out
over it, that it held something for me, that it was my country, and my
home. The lines of gray old Joaquin Miller came to me, and lifted my
heart in a new vision. I said them over to myself:

Lo! these are the isles of the watery miles
That God let down from the firmament.
Lo! Duty and Love, and a true man's trust;
Your forehead to God and your feet in the dust--

only, there were two lines which I did not repeat, I dared not repeat,
even in my heart. My vision halted short of their fulfillment."

"What are the words--do you remember them?" she asked.

"Yes; I can repeat them now, for my vision is broader, it is a better
dream:

Lo! Duty and