ng House. But
first she characteristically admonished her for offering herself a
sacrifice on the altar of the moral welfare of a village which reveled
in every form of iniquity within its reach. Furthermore, she threw in
a brief homily on the subject of the outrageous absurdity of turning
herself into a sort of "hired woman" in the interests of a sepulcher
whose whitewash was so obviously besmirched.

With the departure of the easy-going Kate, Charlie Bryant suddenly
awoke to the claims of the work at his ranch. He must return at once,
or disaster would surely follow.

Helen smiled at his sudden access of zeal, and welcomed his going
without protest. Truth to tell, she never failed to experience a
measure of relief at the avoidance of being alone with him.

Left to herself she moved on down toward the village without haste.
Her enthusiasm for the new church meeting at the house of Mrs. John
Day, who was the leading woman in the village, and, incidentally, the
wife of its chief citizen, who also owned a small lumber yard, was of
a lukewarm character. She had much more interest in the building
itself, and the motley collection of individuals in whose hands its
practical construction lay.

She possessed none of her sister's interest in Rocky Springs. Her
humor denied her serious contemplation of anything in it but the
opposite sex. And even here it frequently trapped her into pitfalls
which demanded the utmost exercise of her ready wit to extricate her
from. No, serious contemplation of her surroundings would have
certainly bored her, had it been possible to shadow her sunny nature.
Fortunately, the latter was beyond the reach of the sordid life in the
midst of which she found herself, and she never failed to laugh her
merry way to those plains of delight belonging to an essentially happy
disposition.

As she walked down the narrow trail, with the depths of green woods
lining it upon either hand, she remembered how beautiful the valley
really was. Of course, it was beautiful. She knew it. Was she not
always being told it? She was never allowed to forget it. Sometimes
she wished she could.

Down the trail a perfect vista of riotous foliage opened out before
her eyes. There, too, in the distance, peeping through the trees, were
scattered profiles of oddly designed houses, possessing a wonderful
picturesqueness to which they had no real claims. They borrowed their
beauty from the wealth of the valley, she told hersel