r limbs.

Her husband watched the girl streaming down the slope. Love swift as
old wine flooded his veins. He rose, caught her to him, and looked
down into the deep, still eyes that were pools of happiness.

"Are you glad--glad all through, sweetheart?" he demanded.

A little laugh welled from her throat. She gave him a tender, mocking
smile.

"I hope heaven's like this," she whispered.

"You don't regret New York--not a single, hidden longing for it 'way
down deep in yore heart?"

She shook her head. "I always wanted to be rescued from the
environment that was stifling me, but I didn't know a way of escape
till you came," she said.

"Then you knew it?"

"From the moment I saw you tie the janitor to the hitching-post. You
remember I was waiting to go riding with Mr. Bromfield. Well, I was
bored to death with correct clothes and manners and thinking. I knew
just what he would say to me and how he would say it and what I would
answer. Then you walked into the picture and took me back to nature."

"It was the hitching-post that did it, then?"

"The hitching-post began it, anyhow." She slipped her arms around his
neck and held him fast. "Oh, Clay, isn't it just too good to be true?"

A ball of fire pushed up into the crotch between two mountain-peaks and
found them like a searchlight, filling their little valley with a
golden glow.

The new day summoned them to labor and play and laughter, perhaps to
tears and sorrow too. But the joy of it was that the call came to them
both. They moved forward to life together.

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