if reluctant to leave this cool, wet surprise
so new in the long desert journey to the northland. Quarters for the
cowboys--comfortable, roomy adobe houses that not even the lamest cowboy
dared describe as crampy bunks--stood in a row upon a long bench of
ground above the lake. And down to the edge of the valley the cluster of
Mexican habitations and the little church showed the touch of the same
renewing hand.

All that had been left of the old Spanish house which had been
Stillwell's home for so long was the bare, massive structure, and
some of this had been cut away for new doors and windows. Every modern
convenience, even to hot and cold running water and acetylene light,
had been installed; and the whole interior painted and carpentered and
furnished. The ideal sought had not been luxury, but comfort. Every door
into the patio looked out upon dark, rich grass and sweet-faced flowers,
and every window looked down the green slopes.

Madeline's rooms occupied the west end of the building and comprised
four in number, all opening out upon the long porch. There was a
small room for her maid, another which she used as an office, then her
sleeping-apartment; and, lastly, the great light chamber which she had
liked so well upon first sight, and which now, simply yet beautifully
furnished and containing her favorite books and pictures, she had come
to love as she had never loved any room at home. In the morning the
fragrant, balmy air blew the white curtains of the open windows; at
noon the drowsy, sultry quiet seemed to creep in for the siesta that was
characteristic of the country; in the afternoon the westering sun peeped
under the porch roof and painted the walls with gold bars that slowly
changed to red.

Madeline Hammond cherished a fancy that the transformation she had
wrought in the old Spanish house and in the people with whom she had
surrounded herself, great as that transformation had been, was as
nothing compared to the one wrought in herself. She had found an object
in life. She was busy, she worked with her hands as well as mind, yet
she seemed to have more time to read and think and study and idle
and dream than ever before. She had seen her brother through his
difficulties, on the road to all the success and prosperity that he
cared for. Madeline had been a conscientious student of ranching and an
apt pupil of Stillwell. The old cattleman, in his simplicity, gave her
the place in his heart that was mea