ing back to the
scenes of his boyhood, long gone by. His real boyhood in far-away Links
was of another world. Fightin' Bill Kenna, Whiskey Mason, the Rev.
Obadiah Champ, the stable and the sawmills, his mother--they were
dreams; even Chicago was less real than this; and he rode like a
schoolboy and yelled whenever a jack rabbit jumped ahead of his horse
and jerked its white tail in quick zigzags, exactly as its kind had done
in the days when he lived in the saddle.

After dinner, by the log fire in the Colonel's dining room, Mrs. Waller
raised the question of their plans. "Now, children" (she loved to be
maternal), "what do you want to do to-morrow?"

There was a time when Belle would have spoken first, but there had been
a subtle, yet very real, change in their relationship. Jim was a child
three years before, dependent almost entirely on her; now she was less
his leader than she had been. She waited.

Gazing at the fire, his long legs straight out and crossed at the
ankles, his hands clasped behind his head, he lounged luxuriously in a
great arm chair. Without turning his gaze from the burning logs he
began:

"If I could do exactly what I wished----"

"Which you may," interjected Mrs. Waller.

"I'd saddle Blazing Star and Red Rover at seven o'clock in the morning
and ride with Belle and not come back till noon."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Waller and the Colonel. "You children! You two
little, little ones! Well, we must remember that Belle is still a bride
and will be for another month, so we'll bid you Godspeed on the new
wedding trip and have your breakfast ready at half past six."

Early hours are the rule in a fort at the front, so the young folk were
not alone at breakfast. And when they rode away on their two splendid
horses, many eyes followed with delight the noble beauty of the pair--so
fitly mounted, so gladly young and strong.

"Now, where, Jim?" said Belle, as they left the gate and thundered over
the bridge at a mettlesome lope. And as she asked, she remembered that
that was the very question he used always to put to her.

"Belle" (he reined in Blazing Star), "I have been waiting till it seemed
just right--waiting for the very time, so we could stand again at our
shrine. Sometimes I think I know my way and the trail I ought to seek,
and sometimes I am filled with doubt; but I know I shall have the clear
vision if we stand again as we used to stand, above our world, beside
the Spirit Rock, on the h