w up
in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
her.

"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.

A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.

"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"

"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.

For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
the darkness.

"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.

Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be c