vity and solitude before taking up her life with
him. She wanted to adapt herself to the metamorphosis that had been
wrought in her.

To her amazement and delight, a very considerable progress had been made
with her plans. Under a sheltered red cliff among the cedars had
been erected the tents where she expected to live until the house
was completed. These tents were large, with broad floors high off the
ground, and there were four of them. Her living tent had a porch under
a wide canvas awning. The bed was a boxlike affair, raised off the floor
two feet, and it contained a great, fragrant mass of cedar boughs upon
which the blankets were to be spread. At one end was a dresser with
large mirror, and a chiffonier. There were table and lamp, a low rocking
chair, a shelf for books, a row of hooks upon which to hang things,
a washstand with its necessary accessories, a little stove and a
neat stack of cedar chips and sticks. Navajo rugs on the floor lent
brightness and comfort.

Carley heard the rustling of cedar branches over her head, and saw
where they brushed against the tent roof. It appeared warm and fragrant
inside, and protected from the wind, and a subdued white light filtered
through the canvas. Almost she felt like reproving herself for the
comfort surrounding her. For she had come West to welcome the hard
knocks of primitive life.

It took less than an hour to have her trunks stored in one of the spare
tents, and to unpack clothes and necessaries for immediate use. Carley
donned the comfortable and somewhat shabby outdoor garb she had worn at
Oak Creek the year before; and it seemed to be the last thing needed to
make her fully realize the glorious truth of the present.

"I'm here," she said to her pale, yet happy face in the mirror. "The
impossible has happened. I have accepted Glenn's life. I have answered
that strange call out of the West."

She wanted to throw herself on the sunlit woolly blankets of her bed and
hug them, to think and think of the bewildering present happiness, to
dream of the future, but she could not lie or sit still, nor keep her
mind from grasping at actualities and possibilities of this place, nor
her hands from itching to do things.

It developed, presently, that she could not have idled away the time
even if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, with
smiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner. Carley
could not understand many Mexican words, a