otment, and on his birthday presented him with a turning-lathe of
wonderful simplicity and multifarious efficiencies. And their mutual
delight in the tool, which was his, was only equalled by their delight
in Mab's first foal, which was Dede's special private property.

It was not until the second summer that Daylight built the huge
fireplace that outrivalled Ferguson's across the valley. For all these
things took time, and Dede and Daylight were not in a hurry. Theirs
was not the mistake of the average city-dweller who flees in
ultra-modern innocence to the soil. They did not essay too much.
Neither did they have a mortgage to clear, nor did they desire wealth.
They wanted little in the way of food, and they had no rent to pay. So
they planned unambiguously, reserving their lives for each other and
for the compensations of country-dwelling from which the average
country-dweller is barred. From Ferguson's example, too, they profited
much. Here was a man who asked for but the plainest fare; who
ministered to his own simple needs with his own hands; who worked out
as a laborer only when he needed money to buy books and magazines; and
who saw to it that the major portion of his waking time was for
enjoyment. He loved to loaf long afternoons in the shade with his
books or to be up with the dawn and away over the hills.

On occasion he accompanied Dede and Daylight on deer hunts through the
wild canons and over the rugged steeps of Hood Mountain, though more
often Dede and Daylight were out alone. This riding was one of their
chief joys. Every wrinkle and crease in the hills they explored, and
they came to know every secret spring and hidden dell in the whole
surrounding wall of the valley. They learned all the trails and
cow-paths; but nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughest
and most impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawl
along the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing their
way along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds and
bulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks on the ranch. Along
the foot trail which led down the side of the big canon to the intake
of the water-pipe, they established their fernery. It was not a formal
affair, and the ferns were left to themselves. Dede and Daylight
merely introduced new ones from time to time, changing them from one
wild habitat to another. It was the same with the wild lilac, which
Daylight ha