journey
from Nolan Doyle's ranch, was absorbed, but his reflections were
as different from those of the Master of Tralee as sunrise is from
midnight; indeed, so bright was the light within Orlando's spirit that
the very prairie around him seemed aflame. The moment with Louise in
the garden lighted by the dim moon, the passing instant of perfect
understanding, the touch of her hair upon his lips, her supple form
yielding to his as he clasped her in his arms, had dropped like a
curtain between him and the fateful episode in the main street of
Askatoon.

That wonderful elation of youth on its first excursion into perfumed
meads of Love possessed him. He had never had flutterings of the heart
for any woman until his eyes met the eyes of Louise at their first
meeting, and a new world had been opened up to him. He had been as naive
and native a human being with all his apparent foppishness, as had ever
moved among men. What seemed his vanity had nothing to do with thoughts
of womankind. It had been a decorative sense come honestly from
picturesque forebears, and indeed from his own mother.

In truth, until the day he had met Louise, or rather until the day of
the broncho-busting, and the fateful night on the prairie, he had
never grown up. He was wise with the wisdom of a child--sheer instinct,
rightness of mind, real decision of character. His giggling laugh had
been the undisciplined simplicity of the child, which, when he had
reached manhood, had never been formalized by conventions. Something
indefinite had marked him until Louise had come, and now he was
definite, determined, alive with a new feeling which made his spirit
sing--his spirit and his lips; for, as he came from Nolan Doyle's ranch
to the Cross Trails, he kept humming to himself, between moments of
silence in which he visualized Louise in a hundred attitudes, as he had
seen her. There had come to him, without the asking even, that which
Joel Mazarine, had he been as rich as any man alive or dead, could not
have bought. That was why he hummed to himself in happiness.

Youth answering to youth had claimed its own; love springing from
the dawn, brave and bright-eyed, had waved its wand towards that good
country called Home. Never from the first had any thought come into the
minds of either of these two that was not linked with the idea of home.
Nothing of the jungle had been in their thoughts, though they had
been tempted, and love and the moment's despair had