od which had only been
broken by the interlude.

It was an interlude not easily forgotten, however. It had brought home
to her a fresh revelation. And it had come in the boy's final appeal
not to give him away. A fierce sense of shame surged through her
heart. It communicated itself to her eyes, and displayed itself
further in the deep flush on her beautiful cheeks. Yet its reason must
have remained obscure to any observer.

She rode on urging her pony to a gait which set him reaching at his
bit. She sat her saddle in a fashion which belonged solely to the
prairie. The long stirrups and straight limb. The lightness, and that
indescribable something which suggests the single personality of horse
and rider.

She had no intention of returning to the ranch house until the noonday
meal, and meanwhile it was her purpose to explore something of the vast
domain which her husband controlled.

It was curious that her purpose should lead her thus. For somehow all
sense of delight in these possessions had passed from her. At one time
the thought of his thousands upon thousands of acres had filled her
with a world of desire, and pride that she was to share in them. But
not now. With every furlong she covered her mood depressed, and her
sense of dread increased. She felt as though she were surveying from a
great distance the details of the prize she had coveted, but the
possession of which was denied her. This--this was the wealth her
husband had bestowed upon her, she told herself bitterly, and some
greater power, some fatalistic power, purposed to snatch it from her
before it reached her hands.

She rode straight for the rising land of the foothills. It almost
seemed as though she were drawn thither by some magnetic influence.
She had formed no definite decision to travel that way. Perhaps it was
the result of a subconscious realization of the monotony of the rolling
tawny grass-land on the flat. The distant view of grazing cattle
failed to break it. The occasional station shack and corral. The
hills rose up in sharp contrast and great variety. There were the
woodland bluffs. There were little trickling streams. There was that
sense of the wild beyond. Perhaps it was all this. Or perhaps it was
the call of a memory, which drew her beyond her power of resistance.

She had long since left all beaten trails, and her way took her over
the wiry growth of seeding grass. She had arrived at the bank of a
na