ed. Carley worked in the mornings with her hands and her
brains. In the afternoons she rode and walked and climbed with a double
object, to work herself into fit physical condition and to explore every
nook and corner of her six hundred and forty acres.

Then what she had expected and deliberately induced by her efforts
quickly came to pass. Just as the year before she had suffered
excruciating pain from aching muscles, and saddle blisters, and walking
blisters, and a very rending of her bones, so now she fell victim to
them again. In sunshine and rain she faced the desert. Sunburn and sting
of sleet were equally to be endured. And that abomination, the hateful
blinding sandstorm, did not daunt her. But the weary hours of abnegation
to this physical torture at least held one consoling recompense as
compared with her experience of last year, and it was that there was no
one interested to watch for her weaknesses and failures and blunders.
She could fight it out alone.

Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by before
Carley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other
sensations. Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as when
she had first visited Arizona. She caught cold and suffered other ills
attendant upon an abrupt change of climate and condition. But doggedly
she kept at her task. She rode when she should have been in bed; she
walked when she should have ridden; she climbed when she should have
kept to level ground. And finally by degrees so gradual as not to be
noticed except in the sum of them she began to mend.

Meanwhile the construction of her house went on with uninterrupted
rapidity. When the low, slanting, wide-eaved roof was completed Carley
lost further concern about rainstorms. Let them come. When the plumbing
was all in and Carley saw verification of Hoyle's assurance that it
would mean a gravity supply of water ample and continual, she lost her
last concern as to the practicability of the work. That, and the earning
of her endurance, seemed to bring closer a wonderful reward, still
nameless and spiritual, that had been unattainable, but now breathed to
her on the fragrant desert wind and in the brooding silence.

The time came when each afternoon's ride or climb called to Carley with
increasing delight. But the fact that she must soon reveal to Glenn her
presence and transformation did not seem to be all the cause. She
could ride without pain, walk wit