oment, followed
by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved
itself suddenly.

As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson
looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and
wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl
to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.

"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will
become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all
rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."

The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister
bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:

"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a
single hidden worry."

"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other
understood.

Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty
of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to
understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own
thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking
should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant
little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition
brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had
overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew
whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not
commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked
rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of
the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a
young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat
beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the
kindly heart.

Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a
moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.

"Them three lights down yonder's the court-house an' the school-house
an' the station. The other town glims are all hid by trees an' bushes
and sundry in the wrinkles of the praira." Ponk always said "praira."
"But it's a beautiful country when you douse the sunshine and turn on
the starlight, or a half-size moon like that young pullet in the west
sky yonder. Ever see the blowout by moonlight? Sorta reclaims its cussed
ugliness, you might say,