s in her place!" she sighed.

"_Dorothy Ann!_" gasped Mrs. Reed. "Remember your husband, Dorothy
Ann!"

"I do," sighed the miller's wife.

"Well, if you _were_ in her place you'd ask somebody to accompany you on
your moonlight strolls, I hope. I _hope_ that's what you'd do, Dorothy
Ann."

"No," answered the miller's wife thoughtfully. "I'd propose. She'll lose
him if she doesn't."

On the evening of that day of blasted hopes the two of them walked away
in the gloaming toward the river, with few words between them until they
left the lights of Comanche behind.

"Mr. Strong is considerably elated over his luck," said Agnes at last,
after many sidling glances at his gloomy profile.

"That's the way it goes," Dr. Slavens sighed. "I don't believe that
chance is blind; I think it's just perverse. I should say, not counting
myself, that Strong is the least deserving of any man in the crowd of
us. Look at old Horace Bentley, the lawyer. He doesn't say anything, but
you can see that his heart is aching with disappointment."

"I have noticed it," she agreed. "He hasn't said ten words since the
last extra."

"When a man like that dreams, he dreams hard--and deep," the doctor
continued. "But how about yourself?"

She laughed, and placed a restraining hand upon his arm.

"You're going too fast," she panted. "I'll be winded before we get to
the river."

"I guess I was trying to overtake my hopes," said he. "I'm sorry; we'll
go slower--in all things--the rest of the way."

She looked at him quickly, a little curiously, but there was no
explanation in his eyes, fixed on the graying landscape beyond the
river.

"It looks like ashes," said he softly, with a motion of the hand toward
the naked hills. "There is no life in it; there is nothing of the dead.
It is a cenotaph of dreams. But how about your claim?"

"It's a little farther up than I had expected," she admitted, but with a
cheerful show of courage which she did not altogether feel.

"Yes; it puts you out of the chance of drawing any agricultural land,
throws you into the grazing and mineral," said he.

"Unless there are a great many lapses," she suggested.

"There will be hundreds, in my opinion," he declared. "But in case there
are not enough to bring you down to the claim worth having--one upon
which you could plant trees and roses and such things?"

"I'll stick to it anyhow," said she determinedly.

"So this is going to be home?" he asked.

"Home," s