effulgence over the
foothills to the east, first with the effect of fire upon their crests,
and then as a great, slowly-whitening ball soaring high into the
fathomless heaven. The girl stood framed in the open window, and the
moonlight painted her face to the purest ivory, and toyed with the rich
brown fastness of her hair, and gleamed from a single ornament at her
throat. And she thought of the young horseman galloping to town;
wondered if he had yet set out on his homeward journey, and the eerie
depths of the valley communicated to her a fantastic admiration for his
skill and bravery. She was under the spell. She was in a new world,
where were manhood, and silence, and the realities of being; and
moonlight, and great gulfs of shadow between the hills, and large,
friendly stars, and soft breezes pushing this way and that without
definite direction, and strange, quiet noises from out of the depths,
and the incense of the evergreens, and a young horseman galloping into
the night. And conventions had been swept away, and it was correct to
live, and to live!

CHAPTER TWO

The first flush of dawn was mellowing the eastern sky when the girl was
awakened from uneasy sleep by sounds in the yard in front of the ranch
house. She had spent most of the night by her father's side, and
although he had at last prevailed upon her to seek some rest for
herself, she had done so under protest and without undressing. Now,
after the first dazed moment of returning consciousness, she was on her
feet and through the door.

The stars were still shining brightly through the cold air. In the
faint light she could distinguish a team and wagon, and men unhitching.
She approached, and, in a voice that sounded strangely distant in the
vastness of the calm night, called, "Is that you, Dave?"

And in a moment she wondered how she had dared call him Dave. But she
soon had other cause for wonder, for the boy replied from near beside
her, in that tone of friendly confidence which springs so spontaneously
in the darkness, "Yes, Reenie, and the doctor, too. We'll have Mr.
Hardy fixed up in no time. How did he stand the night?"

How dared he call her Reenie? A flush of resentment rose in her breast
only to be submerged in the sudden remembrance that she had first
called him Dave. That surely gave him the right to address her as he
had done. But with this thought came recognition of the curious fact
that Dave had not presumed upon