ings into the great canyons! What adventures into the spruce
forests! And how long ago it all seemed. That was before he started
on the paper; before he had been in the grocery business, or in the
coal business; back in the long, long past on the ranch in the days
before his father died. Life--how it goes! And had it brought to her
as many changes as to him? And had it, perhaps, brought to her one
change it had not brought to him--a change in the anchor about which
her heart's affection clung? This girl, riding ahead, suggestive in
every curve and pose of Reenie Hardy. . . His eyes were burning with
loneliness.

He knew he was dull that day, and Edith was particularly charming and
vivacious. She coaxed him into conversation a dozen times, but he
answered absent-mindedly. At length she leapt from her horse and
seated herself, facing the river, on a fallen log. Without looking
back she indicated with her hand the space beside her, and Dave
followed and sat down. For a time they watched the swift water in
silence; blue-green where the current ran deeply; tinged with brown
glow in the shallows from the gravel underneath.

"You aren't talking to-day," she said at length. "You don't quite do
yourself justice. What's wrong?"

[Illustration: "You aren't talking to-day . . . what's wrong?"]

"Oh, nothing," he answered with a laugh, pulling himself together.
"This September weather always gets me. I guess I have a streak of
Indian; it comes of being brought up on the ranges. And in September,
after the first frosts have touched the foliage--" He paused, as
though it was not necessary to say more.

"Yes, I know," she said quietly. Then, with a queer little note of
confidence, "Don't apologize for it, Dave."

"Apologize?" and his form straightened. "Certainly not. . . One
doesn't apologize for nature, does he? . . . But it comes back in
September." He smiled, and she thought the subconscious in him was
calling up the smell of fire in dry grass, or perhaps even the rumble
of buffalo over the hills. And he knew he smiled because he had so
completely misled her.

Presently she took out a pocket volume. "Will you read?" she said.
Strangely enough he opened it at the lines:

"Oh, you will never hide your soul from me;
I've seen the jewels flash, and know 'tis there
Muffle it as you will."

. . . It was dusk when they started homeward.

Forsyth was waiting for her. Dave scented stormy weathe