t have the strength of a giant.
I never felt so little before."

"You are not a heavy burden," he said smiling. "Now are you quite
comfortable? If so we'll start."

Billy arched his neck and turned his head proudly to survey his new
rider, a look of friendliness on his bay face and in his kindly eye.

"Oh, isn't he a beauty!" exclaimed the girl reaching out a timid hand to
pat his neck. The horse bowed and almost seemed to smile. Brownleigh
noticed the gleam of a splendid jewel on the little hand.

"Billy is my good friend and constant companion," said the missionary.
"We've faced some long, hard days together. He is wanting me to tell you
now that he is proud to carry you back to your friends."

Billy bowed up and down and smiled again, and Hazel laughed out with
pleasure. Then her face grew sober again.

"But you will have to walk," she said. "I cannot take your horse and
let you walk. I won't do that. I'm going to walk with you."

"And use up what strength you have so that you could not even ride?" he
said pleasantly. "No, I couldn't allow that, you know, and I am pleased
to walk with a companion. A missionary's life is pretty lonesome
sometimes, you know. Come, Billy, we must be starting, for we want to
make a good ten miles before we stop to rest if our guest can stand the
journey."

With stately steppings as if he knew he bore a princess Billy started;
and with long, easy strides Brownleigh walked by his side, ever watchful
of the way, and furtively observing the face of the girl, whose strength
he well knew must be extremely limited after her ride of the day before.

Out on the top of the mesa looking off towards the great mountains and
the wide expanse of seemingly infinite shades and colourings Hazel drew
her breath in wonder at the beauty of the scene. Her companion called
her attention to this and that point of interest. The slender dark line
across the plain was mesquite. He told her how when once they had
entered it it would seem to spread out vastly as though it filled the
whole valley, and that then looking back the grassy slope below them
would seem to be an insignificant streak of yellow. He told her it was
always so in this land, that the kind of landscape through which one was
passing filled the whole view and seemed the only thing in life. He said
he supposed it was so in all our lives, that the immediate present
filled the whole view of the future until we came to something else; and
the l