his land where old men are many and the young ones old
with hardship and grave with the silence of the hills. Her life had
been spent entirely among men who were her seniors, and, although she
had ruled them like a spoiled queen, she knew as little of their sex as
they did of hers. Unconsciously the strong young life within her had
clamored for companionship, and it was this that had drawn her to
Poleon Doret--who would ever remain a boy--and it was this that drew
her to the young Kentuckian; this, and something else in him, that the
others lacked.

"Now that I think it over," he continued, "I'd rather have you like me
than have the men do so."

"Of course," she nodded. "They do anything I want them to--all but
father, and--"

"It isn't that," he interrupted, quickly. "It is because you ARE the
only woman of the place, because you are such a surprise. To think that
in the heart of this desolation I should find a girl like--like you,
like the girls I know at home."

"Am I like other girls?" she inquired, eagerly. "I have often wondered."

"You are, and you are not. You are surprisingly conventional for these
surroundings, and yet unconventionally surprising--for any place. Who
are you? Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

"I am just what you see. I came from the States, and I was carried.
That is all I can remember."

"Then you haven't lived here always?"

"Oh, dear, no! We came here while I was very little, but of late I have
been away at school."

"Some seminary, eh?"

At this she laughed aloud. "Hardly that, either. I've been at the
Mission. Father Barnum has been teaching me for five years. I came
up-river a day ahead of you."

She asked no questions of him in return, for she had already learned
all there was to know the day before from a grizzled corporal in whom
was the hunger to talk. She had learned of a family of Burrells whose
name was known throughout the South, and that Meade Burrell came from
the Frankfort branch, the branch that had raised the soldiers. His
father had fought with Lee, and an uncle was now in the service at
Washington. On the mother's side the strain was equally militant, but
the Meades had sought the sea. The old soldier had told her much more,
of which she understood little; told her of the young man's sister, who
had come all the way from Kentucky to see her brother off when he
sailed from San Francisco; told her of the Lieutenant's many friends in
Washington, a