ocession of cloudless days, with the tinkling of streams shrinking
under the triumphant sun, with the pines exhaling scented breaths, and
a first, faint sprouting of new green. The great refreshed landscape
unveiled itself, serenely brooding in a vast, internal energy of
germination. The earth was coming to life as they were, gathering
itself for the expression of its ultimate purpose. It was rising to
the rite of rebirth and they rose with it, with faces uplifted to its
kindling glory and hearts in which joy was touched by awe.

On a May evening, when the shadows were congregating in the canon,
Susan lay on the bunk with her son in the hollow of her arm. The
children came in and peeped fearfully at the little hairless head,
pulling down the coverings with careful fingers and eying the newcomer
dubiously, not sure that they liked him. Bella looked over their
shoulders radiating proud content. Then she shooed them out and went
about her work of "redding up," pacing the earthen floor with the proud
tread of victory. Courant was sitting outside on the log bench. She
moved to the door and smiled down at him over the tin plate she was
scouring.

"Come in and sit with her while I get the supper," she said. "Don't
talk, just sit where she can see you."

He came and sat beside her, and she drew the blanket down from the
tiny, crumpled face. They were silent, wondering at it, looking back
over the time when it had cried in their blood, inexorably drawn them
together, till out of the heat of their passion the spark of its being
had been struck. Both saw in it their excuse and their pardon.

She recovered rapidly, all her being revivified and reinforced, coming
back glowingly to a mature beauty. Glimpses of the Susan of old began
to reappear. She wanted her looking-glass, and, sitting up in the bunk
with the baby against her side, arranged her hair in the becoming knot
and twisted the locks on her temples into artful tendrils. She would
sew soon, and kept Bella busy digging into the trunks and bringing out
what was left of her best things. They held weighty conferences over
these, the foot of the bunk littered with wrinkled skirts and jackets
that had fitted a slimmer and more elegant Susan. A trip to Sacramento
was talked of, in which Daddy John was to shop for a lady and baby, and
buy all manner of strange articles of which he knew nothing.

"Calico, that's a pretty color," he exclaimed testily. "How am I to