a shallow bowl and watered them, and talked to
them, and admired their beauty, and when they were wilted she threw
them out, but she did not gather more flowers to fill the bowl,
instead she wiped it dry and returned it to its shelf in the
cupboard--and wondered when Bethune would come again. She admitted to
herself that he interested--at least, amused her--helped her to throw
off for the moment the spirit of dull depression that had fastened
itself upon her like a tangible thing, bearing down upon her,
threatening to crush her with its weight.

Always, during these brief visits, her lurking distrust of him
vanished in the frank boyishness of his personality. The incidents
that had engendered the distrust--the substitution of the name Schultz
for Schmidt in the matter of the horse pasture, his abrupt warning
against Vil Holland, and his attempt to be admitted into her
confidence as a matter of right, were for the moment forgotten in the
spell of his presence--but always during her lonely rides in the
hills, the half-formed doubt returned. Pondering the doubt, she
realized that the principal reason for its continued existence was not
so much in the incidents that had awakened it, as in the simple
question asked by Vil Holland: "You say your dad told you all about
this partnership business?" And in the "Oh," with which he had greeted
the reply that she had it from the lips of Bethune. With the
realization, her dislike for Vil Holland increased. She characterized
him as a "jug-guzzler," a "swashbuckler," and a "ruffian"--and smiled
as she recalled the picturesque figure with the clean-cut, bronzed
face. "Oh, I don't know--I hate these hills! Nobody seems sincere
excepting the Wattses, and they're--impossible!"

She had borrowed Watts's team and made a second trip to town for
supplies, and the check that she drew in payment cut her bank account
in half. As before she had offered to take Microby Dandeline, but the
girl declined to go, giving as an excuse that "pitcher shows wasn't as
good as circusts, an' they wasn't no fights, an' she didn't like
towns, nohow."

Upon her return from town Patty stopped at the Thompsons' for dinner
where she was accorded a royal welcome by the genial rancher and his
wife, and where also, she met the Reverend Len Christie, the most
picturesque, and the most un-clerical minister of the gospel she had
ever seen. To all appearances the man might have been a cowboy. He
affected chaps of yello