and she drowsily closed her eyes, to find when she opened them
again that the glaring white sky had changed to a steel-blue. The sun
had sunk behind the foothills and the air was growing chilly. Stillwell
had returned to the driving-seat and was chuckling to the horses.
Shadows crept up out of the hollows.

"Wal, Flo," said Stillwell, "I reckon we'd better hev the rest of thet
there lunch before dark."

"You didn't leave much of it," laughed Florence, as she produced the
basket from under the seat.

While they ate, the short twilight shaded and gloom filled the hollows.
Madeline saw the first star, a faint, winking point of light. The sky
had now changed to a hazy gray. Madeline saw it gradually clear and
darken, to show other faint stars. After that there was perceptible
deepening of the gray and an enlarging of the stars and a brightening of
new-born ones. Night seemed to come on the cold wind. Madeline was glad
to have the robes close around her and to lean against Florence. The
hollows were now black, but the tops of the foothills gleamed pale in
a soft light. The steady tramp of the horses went on, and the creak of
wheels and crunching of gravel. Madeline grew so sleepy that she could
not keep her weary eyelids from falling. There were drowsier spells in
which she lost a feeling of where she was, and these were disturbed by
the jolt of wheels over a rough place. Then came a blank interval, short
or long, which ended in a more violent lurch of the buckboard. Madeline
awoke to find her head on Florence's shoulder. She sat up laughing and
apologizing for her laziness. Florence assured her they would soon reach
the ranch.

Madeline observed then that the horses were once more trotting. The wind
was colder, the night darker, the foot-hills flatter. And the sky was
now a wonderful deep velvet-blue blazing with millions of stars. Some
of them were magnificent. How strangely white and alive! Again Madeline
felt the insistence of familiar yet baffling associations. These white
stars called strangely to her or haunted her.

V. The Round-Up

It was a crackling and roaring of fire that awakened Madeline next
morning, and the first thing she saw was a huge stone fireplace in which
lay a bundle of blazing sticks. Some one had kindled a fire while she
slept. For a moment the curious sensation of being lost returned to her.
She just dimly remembered reaching the ranch and being taken into a huge
house and a huge, dim