he Teft House, where Bud and O'mie and I stopped, I met Richard
Tillhurst. We greeted each other cordially enough.

"So you're here to enlist, too," he said. "I thought maybe you were on
your way home. I am going to enlist myself and give up teaching
altogether if I can pass muster." He was hardly of the physical build
for a soldier. "Have you heard the news?" he went on. "Judson and
Marjory are engaged. Marjie doesn't speak of it, of course, but Judson
told Dr. Hemingway and asked him to officiate when the time comes. Mrs.
Whately says it's between the young people, and that means she has given
her consent. Judson spends half his time at Whately's, whether Marjie's
there or not. There's something in the air down there this Fall that's
got everybody keyed up one way or another. Tell Mapleson's been like a
boy at a circus, he's so pleased over something; and Conlow has a grin
on his face all the time. Everybody seems just unsettled and anxious,
except Judge Baronet. Honestly, I don't see how that town could keep
balanced without him. He sails along serene and self-possessed. Always
knows more than he tells."

"I guess Springvale is safe with him, and we can go out and save the
frontier," I said carelessly.

"For goodness' sake, who goes there?" Tillhurst pushed me aside and made
a rush out of doors, as a lady passed before the windows. I followed and
caught a glimpse of the black hair and handsome form of Rachel Melrose.
At the same moment she saw me. Her greeting lacked a little of its
former warmth, but her utter disregard of anything unpleasant having
been between us was positively admirable. Her most coquettish smiles,
however, were for Tillhurst, but that didn't trouble me. Our interview
was cut short by the arrival of the stage from the south just then, and
I turned from Tillhurst to find myself in my father's embrace. What
followed makes one of the sacred memories a man does not often put into
print.

We wanted to be alone, so we left the noisy hotel and strolled out
toward the higher level beyond the town. There was only brown prairie
then stretching to the westward and dipping down with curve and ravine
to the Kaw River on the one side and the crooked little Shunganunga
Creek on the other. Away in the southwest the graceful curve of
Burnett's Mound, a low height like a tiny mountain-peak, stood out
purple and hazy in the October sunlight. A handful of sturdy young
people were taking their way to Lincoln Coll