wrong; you smile at her imperious pride and encourage
her wilfulness, and then not only wonder at the results, but blame her,
poor child, for all. Oh, you are a fine lot, The Duke and all of you!"

He had a most exasperating ability for putting one in the wrong, and
I could only think of the proper and sufficient reply long after the
opportunity for making it had passed. I wondered what The Duke would say
to this doctrine. All the following day, which was Sunday, I could see
that Gwen was on The Pilot's mind. He was struggling with the problem of
pain.

Monday morning found us on the way to the Old Timer's ranch. And what
a morning it was! How beautiful our world seemed! About us rolled the
round-topped, velvet hills, brown and yellow or faintly green, spreading
out behind us to the broad prairie, and before, clambering up and up
to meet the purple bases of the great mountains that lay their mighty
length along the horizon and thrust up white, sunlit peaks into the blue
sky. On the hillsides and down in the sheltering hollows we could see
the bunches of cattle and horses feeding upon the rich grasses. High
above, the sky, cloudless and blue, arched its great kindly roof from
prairie to mountain peaks, and over all, above, below, upon prairie,
hillsides and mountains, the sun poured his floods of radiant yellow
light.

As we followed the trail that wound up and into the heart of these
rounded hills and ever nearer to the purple mountains, the morning
breeze swept down to meet us, bearing a thousand scents, and filling us
with its own fresh life. One can know the quickening joyousness of these
Foothill breezes only after he has drunk with wide-open mouth, deep and
full of them.

Through all this mingling beauty of sunlit hills and shady hollows and
purple, snow-peaked mountains, we rode with hardly a word, every minute
adding to our heart-filling delight, but ever with the thought of
the little room where, shut in from all this outside glory, lay Gwen,
heart-sore with fretting and longing. This must have been in The Pilot's
mind, for he suddenly held up his horse and burst out:

"Poor Gwen, how she loves all this!--it is her very life. How can she
help fretting the heart out of her? To see this no more!" He flung
himself off his bronco and said, as if thinking aloud: "It is too awful!
Oh, it is cruel! I don't wonder at her! God help me, what can I say to
her?"

He threw himself down upon the grass and turned over o