hat you are really here, isn't it splendid? Mountains are such
good neighbors. They give you their great company and yet leave you your
own little reservations."

"But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors," Mary announced, with
such a rueful expression that they both smiled.

"Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind. I've had longer than you
to cultivate it."

Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in their strength. "Awesome as
they are," she laughed, "they don't frighten me nearly as much as Ben and
Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils, and I feel so ridiculous
sitting up back of that tub, teaching them letters and the spelling of
foolish words, when they know things I've never dreamed of. The other day,
out of a few scratches in the dust that I should never have given a second
glance, one of them made out that some one's horses had broken the corral
and one was trailing a rope. Whereupon my pupil got on a horse, went in
search of the strays, and returned them to men going to a round-up. After
that, the spelling of cat didn't seem quite so much of an achievement as
it had before."

"But they need the spelling of cat so much more than you need to
understand trail-marks. Why don't you try a little strategy with them?
Perhaps a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something in history
about the part played in colonization by the bright-colored bead."

Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer history of the United States
came back to Mary. In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers,
from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were unfailingly depicted in the
attitude of salesmen displaying squares of cloth to savages apparently in
urgent need of them.

"How stupid of me not to remember Father Marquette concluding negotiations
with a necklace!"

"Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty from Pere Marquette, and
there you are!"

"You are so splendid!" said Mary, impulsively, remembering Judith's own
sorrows and the smiling fortitude with which she kept them hidden. "You
make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been whining."

Judith looked towards the mountains a long time without speaking.

"When you know them well, they whisper great things that little folk can't
take away."

She turned back towards camp, walking lightly, with head thrown back. Mary
watched her. Yes, the mountains might have admitted her to their company.

XV