first to succumb, and burst into a quick spasm of
angry tears. That single act of weakness called out the boy's pride and
strength. There was no longer an equality of suffering; he had become
her protector; he felt himself responsible for both. Considering her no
longer his equal, he was no longer frank with her.

"There's nothin' to boo-boo for," he said, with a half-affected
brusqueness. "So quit, now! They'll stop in a minit, and send some one
back for us. Shouldn't wonder if they're doin' it now."

But Susy, with feminine discrimination detecting the hollow ring in his
voice, here threw herself upon him and began to beat him violently with
her little fists. "They ain't! They ain't! They ain't. You know it!
How dare you?" Then, exhausted with her struggles, she suddenly threw
herself flat on the dry grass, shut her eyes tightly, and clutched at
the stubble.

"Get up," said the boy, with a pale, determined face that seemed to have
got much older.

"You leave me be," said Susy.

"Do you want me to go away and leave you?" asked the boy.

Susy opened one blue eye furtively in the secure depths of her
sun-bonnet, and gazed at his changed face.

"Ye-e-s."

He pretended to turn away, but really to look at the height of the
sinking sun.

"Kla'uns!"

"Well?"

"Take me."

She was holding up her hands. He lifted her gently in his arms, dropping
her head over his shoulder. "Now," he said cheerfully, "you keep a good
lookout that way, and I this, and we'll soon be there."

The idea seemed to please her. After Clarence had stumbled on for a few
moments, she said, "Do you see anything, Kla'uns?"

"Not yet."

"No more don't I." This equality of perception apparently satisfied her.
Presently she lay more limp in his arms. She was asleep.

The sun was sinking lower; it had already touched the edge of the
horizon, and was level with his dazzled and straining eyes. At times it
seemed to impede his eager search and task his vision. Haze and black
spots floated across the horizon, and round wafers, like duplicates of
the sun, glittered back from the dull surface of the plains. Then he
resolved to look no more until he had counted fifty, a hundred,
but always with the same result, the return of the empty, unending
plains--the disk growing redder as it neared the horizon, the fire it
seemed to kindle as it sank, but nothing more.

Staggering under his burden, he tried to distract himself by fancying
how the discovery