hich hemmed in the little valley were a deep, velvety blue in
the morning light. Em looked at them with a new throb in her heart. She
did not care what was beyond them as she walked between the tangled
vine-rows. Stephen Elliott had left Irene, and walked beside her. The
valley was wide enough for Em's world,--a girl's world, which is hemmed
in by mountains always, and always narrow.

As the day advanced the gay calls of the grape-harvesters grew more and
more infrequent. The sky seemed to fade in the glare of the sun to a
pale, whitish blue. Buzzards reeled through the air, as if drunken with
sunlight. The ashen soil of the vineyard burned Em's feet and dazzled
her eyes. She stood up now and then and looked far down the valley where
the yellow barley-stubble shimmered off into haze. As she looked,
something straightened her lips into a resolute line and sent her back
to her work with softened eyes.

"Do you get very tired, Em?" her brother asked, as she sat in the
doorway at nightfall.

The girl leaned her head against the casement as if to steady her weary
voice.

"Not very," she said slowly and gravely; "it's a little warm at noon,
but I don't mind it."

"I thought sure I'd be up by this time," fretted the invalid, the
yearning in his heart that pain could not quench turning his sympathy to
envy.

"The doctor says you're getting on real well, Ben," said Em steadily.

The young fellow looked down at his wasted hands, gray and ghostly in
the twilight.

"Was 'Rene there?" he asked.

"Yes."

"It isn't like having your sister go out to work, Benny," said Mrs.
Wickersham soothingly; "just the neighbors, and real nice folks, too. I
wouldn't fret about it."

On Wednesday morning, as Em neared the camp, she saw the grape-pickers
gathered in a little group before the girls' tent. Steve Elliott
separated himself from the crowd, and came to meet her.

"We've struck, Em," he said, smiling down at her from the shadow of his
big hat.

"Who's we?" asked Em gravely.

"All of us. They're paying a dollar and a quarter over at Briggs's; we
ain't a-goin' to stand it."

Em had stopped in the path. The young fellow stepped behind her, and she
went on.

"Why don't you all go over to Briggs's and go to work?" she asked,
without turning her head.

"Too far--the foreman'll come to time."

They came up to the noisy group, and Em seated herself on a pile of
trays and loosened the strings of her wide hat; she was tired f