rong,
treating a little girl that way?" Then she added, viciously: "I hate
Him! I don't care! I hate Him!"

But The Pilot did not wince. I wondered how he would solve that problem
that was puzzling, not only Gwen, but her father and The Duke, and all
of us--the WHY of human pain.

"Gwen," said The Pilot, as if changing the subject, "did it hurt to put
on the plaster jacket?"

"You just bet!" said Gwen, lapsing in her English, as The Duke was not
present; "it was worse than anything--awful! They had to straighten me
out, you know," and she shuddered at the memory of that pain.

"What a pity your father or The Duke was not here!" said The Pilot,
earnestly.

"Why, they were both here!"

"What a cruel shame!" burst out The Pilot. "Don't they care for you any
more?"

"Of course they do," said Gwen, indignantly.

"Why didn't they stop the doctors from hurting you so cruelly?"

"Why, they let the doctors. It is going to help me to sit up and perhaps
to walk about a little," answered Gwen, with blue-gray eyes open wide.

"Oh," said The Pilot, "it was very mean to stand by and see you hurt
like that."

"Why, you silly," replied Owen, impatiently, "they want my back to get
straight and strong."

"Oh, then they didn't do it just for fun or for nothing?" said The
Pilot, innocently.

Gwen gazed at him in amazed and speechless wrath, and he went on:

"I mean they love you though they let you be hurt; or rather they let
the doctors hurt you BECAUSE they loved you and wanted to make you
better."

Gwen kept her eyes fixed with curious earnestness upon his face till the
light began to dawn.

"Do you mean," she began slowly, "that though God let me fall, He loves
me?"

The Pilot nodded; he could not trust his voice.

"I wonder if that can be true," she said, as if to herself; and soon
we said good-by and came away--The Pilot, limp and voiceless, but I
triumphant, for I began to see a little light for Gwen.

But the fight was by no means over; indeed, it was hardly well begun.
For when the autumn came, with its misty, purple days, most glorious of
all days in the cattle country, the old restlessness came back and the
fierce refusal of her lot. Then came the day of the round-up. Why should
she have to stay while all went after the cattle? The Duke would
have remained, but she impatiently sent him away. She was weary and
heart-sick, and, worst of all, she began to feel that most terrible of
burdens, the burden of h