ge bargain ads she read hungrily. The weekly
announcements of the movie shows, the news, the want columns--these were
at once her solace and her torment; and if you have ever been exiled,
you know what that means.

Here, too, she left her shopping list and money for the stage driver, who
bought what she needed and left the goods at the foot of the post, and
what money remained in a buckskin bag in the macaroni box.

An obliging stage driver was he, a tobacco chewing, red-faced,
red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and
never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage
driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be,
and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be
waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for
the favor she must ask of him--which was every time she handed him a
list--the stage driver invariably a nasal kind of snort, spat far out
over the wheel, and declared pettishly:

"It ain't a mite uh trouble in the world. That's what I'm _fur_--to help
folks out along my rowt. Don't you worry a mite about that." Often as he
said it, he yet gave it the tone of sincerity and of convincing
freshness, as though he had never before given the matter a thought.
Helen May did not know what she would have done without that stage driver
to bridge the gulf between Sunlight Basin and the world.

But this was not stage day. That is to say, the stage had passed to the
far side of its orbit, and would not return until to-morrow. From San
Bonito it swung in a day-long journey across the desert to Malpais,
thence by a different route to San Bonito again, so that Helen May never
saw it returning whence it had come.

A cloud of desert dust always heralded its approach from the east.
Sometimes after the first dust signal, it took him nearly an hour to top
the low ridge which was really one rim of the Basin. Then Helen May would
know that he carried passengers or freight that straightened the backs of
the straining four horses in the long stretch of sand beyond the ridge
and made their progress slow.

But to-day there was no dust signal, and the macaroni box was but a
dismal reminder of her exile. The world was very far away, behind the
violet rim of mountains, and she was just a speck in the desert. Her high
laced boots were heavy, and the dust settled in the creases around her
slim ankles, that could be perfe