I was a stranger and ye took me not in."

RUSKIN.

For a time they busied themselves with different things about their
little home, worked in the garden, and held a round-up of their stock
that they might know the extent of their wealth; and because, in a
life quite apart from human beings, animals come to take their place
to a greater extent than might seem possible.

It was a very pleasant time. Everything seemed so gentle, so willing
to be friends, and so certain of their good-will.

"You used to be a Kipling fiend," said Adam, one morning, when they
had been salting the cattle, and were resting before going home.
"Didn't he write a Jungle tale about 'How Fear Came'? He ought to be
here now to write another to show how Fear might go."

"It seems to me he did," Robin answered, running her fingers through
the short, curly forelock of a colt that stood placidly licking her
hand. "I wonder that they don't remember longer, or perhaps they know
that we think they are folks. Really, I think we ought to hold a
reception, a kind of salon, once a week, so as to keep acquainted with
our neighbors."

"You are an absurd child," he said, laughing; "but does that mean that
you have really decided to go on living?"

"I don't know," she said. "What did we determine? By the way, which
side of this question are you on?"

"Both," he said decidedly.

"Oh! then we can't do like those men Cooper told about, in 'The
Pioneers,' wasn't it? who argued and argued every night until at last
they convinced each other, and then started in to argue it out again."

"No," he answered, "I rather think that we are answering ourselves
rather than each other, anyhow. Robin, where was 'the land of Nod'?"

"That is one of the questions that I was sent to bed for asking a
preacher who was visiting at our house, when I was about seven years
old. They hurried me hence before he had a chance to answer, so I
never found out. But I know what you are thinking of, and I have
thought of it too. Perhaps there isn't any land of Nod, or any land at
all. And I have thought, also, how it would be if one of us died and
left the other with little children. You might take my body and jump
off the rock, but you couldn't take them too, and still less could you
leave them."

"I have thought of the risk to you," he said, "and felt that not even
for the sake of a child would I let you come so near death."

She laughed a little. "That is really funny," she s