yed toward him. He caught her by the arms. She looked at him
and tried to smile, but instead she crumpled into a heap on a rock and
cried--cried as though her heart would break.

Lewis sat down beside her and put one arm around her.

"Why, Nat, aren't you glad to see me? Nat, don't cry! Aren't you glad
I've come?"

Natalie nodded her head hard, but did not try to speak. Not till she had
quite finished crying did she look up. Then her tear-stained face broke
into a radiant smile.

"That's--that's why I'm crying," she gasped; "because I'm so glad."

So there they sat together and talked about what? About strawberries.
Lewis said that he had walked miles across the fields, and seen heaps of
blossoms but no berries. He didn't think the wild ones had berries.
Which, Natalie said, was nonsense. Of course they had berries, only it
was too early. She had found three that were pinkish. She pointed to
them where they had rolled from the little tin pail. Lewis picked one up
and examined it.

"You're right," he said gravely, "it's a strawberry."

Then silence fell upon them--a long silence, and at the end Lewis said:

"Nat, do you remember at Nadir the guavas--when, you'd come out to where
I was with the goats?"

Natalie nodded, a starry look in her far-away eyes.

"Nat," said Lew, "tell me about it--about Nadir--about--about
everything. About how you went back to Consolation Cottage."

Natalie flashed a look at him.

"How did you know we had been back to Consolation Cottage?"

"Why, I went there," said Lewis. "It isn't three months since I went
there."

"Did you, Lew?" said Natalie, her face brightening. "Did you go just to
look for us?"

"Of course," said Lewis. "Now tell me."

"No," said Natalie, with a shake of her head, "you first."

CHAPTER XLV

In the innocence of that first hour Lewis told Natalie all. He even told
her of Folly, as though Folly, like all else, was something they could
share between them. Natalie did not wince. There are blows that just
sting--the sharp, quick blows that make us cry out, and then wonder why
we cried, so quickly does the pain pass. They are nothing beside the
blows that slowly fall and crush and keep their pain back till the
overwhelming last.

People wonder at the cruel punishment a battered man can take and never
cry out, at the calm that fills the moment of life after the mortal
wound, and at the steady, quiet gaze of big game stricken unto death.
They do n