had been
as hard and barren as the dry valley where they had lived. But as the
valley had been transformed by the soft, rich touch of water, so their
lives had been transformed by help and sympathy and work. The children
were wretched no more, and many that had been blind could now see, and
Madeline had become to them a new and blessed virgin.

Madeline looked abroad over these lands and likened the change in them
and those who lived by them to the change in her heart. It may have
been fancy, but the sun seemed to be brighter, the sky bluer, the wind
sweeter. Certain it was that the deep green of grass and garden was not
fancy, nor the white and pink of blossom, nor the blaze and perfume of
flower, nor the sheen of lake and the fluttering of new-born leaves.
Where there had been monotonous gray there was now vivid and changing
color. Formerly there had been silence both day and night; now during
the sunny hours there was music. The whistle of prancing stallions
pealed in from the grassy ridges. Innumerable birds had come and, like
the northward-journeying ducks, they had tarried to stay. The song
of meadow-lark and blackbird and robin, familiar to Madeline from
childhood, mingled with the new and strange heart-throbbing song
of mocking-bird and the piercing blast of the desert eagle and the
melancholy moan of turtle-dove.

*****

One April morning Madeline sat in her office wrestling with a problem.
She had problems to solve every day. The majority of these were
concerned with the management of twenty-seven incomprehensible cowboys.
This particular problem involved Ambrose Mills, who had eloped with her
French maid, Christine.

Stillwell faced Madeline with a smile almost as huge as his bulk.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, we ketched them; but not before Padre Marcos had
married them. All thet speedin' in the autoomoobile was jest a-scarin'
of me to death fer nothin'. I tell you Link Stevens is crazy about
runnin' thet car. Link never hed no sense even with a hoss. He ain't
afraid of the devil hisself. If my hair hedn't been white it 'd be white
now. No more rides in thet thing fer me! Wal, we ketched Ambrose an'
the girl too late. But we fetched them back, an' they're out there now,
spoonin', sure oblivious to their shameless conduct."

"Stillwell, what shall I say to Ambrose? How shall I punish him? He has
done wrong to deceive me. I never was so surprised in my life. Christine
did not seem to care any more for