gone beyond nature. Upon
them, as upon their elders, had settled the silences and the vaguely
wondering expression of those who live in lands of drought and hardship,
who look upon fate daily.

Both of the children had become thin and hard; but to Lewis had come a
greater change. His brown hair and eyes had darkened almost to black,
his skin taken on an olive tinge. His face, with its eager eyes
sometimes shining like the high lights in a deep pool or suddenly grown
slumberous with dreams, began to proclaim him a Leighton of the
Leightons. So evident became the badge of lineage that Ann and the
Reverend Orme both noticed it. To Ann it meant nothing, but in the
Reverend Orme it aroused bitter memories of his own boy. He began to
avert his eyes from Lewis.

It was about this time that Natalie and Lewis cut their names to Lew and
Nat. The two were inseparable. Each had a pony, and they roved at will
until the sad day when a school was first opened in that wilderness.

It happened that Dom Francisco, the cattle king from whom Leighton had
purchased Nadir, was a widower twice over and the father of twenty
children, many of them still of tender years. When he learned that
Leighton had been a schoolmaster, he did not rest until he had persuaded
him to undertake the instruction of such of his children as were not
already of use on the ranch. The Reverend Orme consented from necessity.
His cash from the sale of Leighton Academy was gone; the rents from
Consolation Cottage were small and reached him at long intervals.

Once more routine fell upon the Leighton household; once more the years
stole by.

Lewis's school days were short. The Reverend Orme found that he could
not stand the constant sight of the boy's face. To save himself from the
shame of an outburst, he had bought a flock of goats and put Lewis in
charge. Sometimes on his pony, sometimes on foot, Lewis wandered with
his flock over the low hills. When the rains had been kind and the
wilderness was a riot of leaf and bloom above long reaches of verdant
young grass, his journeys were short. But when the grass was dry, the
endless thorn-trees leafless, and the whole earth, stripped of Nature's
awnings, weltered under a brazen sky, the hardy goats carried him far in
their search for sustenance.

When he was near, Natalie joined him as soon as school and household
duties would let her. Those were happy, quiet hours. Sometimes she
brought cookies, hot from mammy's ove