nner; and, in the
kindness of her heart, she had determined to see that the "young
artisan," as her cousin had called him, was not led on to his own
undoing. Now, however, she began to suspect that some one had made a
mistake. This young man seemed to be abundantly able to fight his own
battles.

"I presume you are very familiar with this part of the country--along
your own line, Mr. Brockway," she said, when the waiter came in to lay
the plates.

"In the way that I have just indicated, yes. I know so much of its face
as you can see from this window. But my knowledge doesn't go much beyond
the visible horizon."

"Neither does mine, but I can imagine," Gertrude said.

"Ah, yes; but imagination isn't knowledge."

"No; it's often better."

"Pleasanter, you mean; I grant you that."

"No, I meant more accurate."

"For instance?"

Gertrude smiled. "You are quite merciless, aren't you? But if I must
defend myself I should say that imagination paints a composite picture,
out of drawing as to details, perhaps, but typically true."

Brockway objected. "Being unimaginative, I can't quite accept that."

"Can't you? That is what Priscilla Beaswicke would call the disadvantage
of being Occidentalized."

"I suppose I am that," Brockway admitted cheerfully. "I can always
breathe freer out here between these wide horizons; and the majesty of
this Great Flatness appeals to me even more than that of the mountains."

They followed his gesture. The sun was dipping to the western edge of
the bare plain, and the air was filled with ambient gold. The tawny
earth, naked and limitless, melted so remotely into the dusty glow of
the sky as to leave no line of demarcation. The lack of shadows and the
absence of landmarks confused the senses until the flying train seemed
to stand with ungripping wheels in the midst of a slowly revolving disk
of yellow flatness, through which the telegraph-poles and mile-posts
darted with sentient and uncanny swiftness.

"I can feel its sublimity," Gertrude said, softly, answering his
thought; "but its solemn unchangeableness depresses me. I love nature's
moods and tenses, and it seems flippant to mention such things in the
presence of so much fixity."

Brockway smiled. "The prairie has its moods, too. A little later in the
year we should be running between lines of fire, and those big balls of
tumbleweed would be racing ahead of the wind like small meteors. Later
still, when the snows come, it ha