d never leave," he told her,
his voice so grave and earnest that it trembled a little on the low
notes.

Joan drew her breath again with that long inspiration which was like a
satisfied sigh.

"Well, I must go," she said.

But she did not move, and Mackenzie, drawing nearer, put out his hand
in his way of silent appeal again.

"Not that I don't want you to know what there is out there," he said,
"but because I'd save you the disappointment, the disillusionment, and
the heartache that too often go with the knowledge of the world. You'd
be better for it if you never knew, living here undefiled like a
spring that comes out of the rocks into the sun."

"Well, I must go," said Joan, sighing with repletion again, but taking
no step toward her waiting horse.

Although it was a moment which seemed full of things to be said,
neither had words for it, but stood silently while the day went out in
glory around them. Dad Frazer was bringing his murmuring flock home to
the bedding-ground on the hillside below the wagon; the wind was low
as a lover's breath, lifting Joan's russet hair from her pure, placid
brow.

And she must go at last, with a word of parting from the saddle, and
her hand held out to him in a new tenderness as if going home were a
thing to be remembered. And as Mackenzie took it there rose in his
memory the lines:

_Touch hands and part with laughter,
Touch lips and part with tears._

Joan rode away against the sun, which was red upon the hill, and stood
for a little moment sharply against the fiery sky to wave him a
farewell.

"So easily learned, Joan; so hard to forget," said Mackenzie, speaking
as if he sent his voice after her, a whisper on the wind, although she
was half a mile away. A moment more, and the hill stood empty between
them. Mackenzie turned to prepare supper for the coming of Dad Frazer,
who would complain against books and the nonsense contained in them if
the food was not on the board when he came up the hill.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SHEEP-KILLER

It was dusk when Dad Frazer drove the slow-drifting flock home to its
sleeping place, which tomorrow night very likely would be on some
hillside no softer, many miles away. Only a few days together the camp
remained in one place, no longer than it took the sheep to crop the
herbage within easy reach. Then came the camp-mover and hauled the
wagon to fresh pastures in that illimitable, gray-green land