r time and loved.

So hoping you're in Heaven, as this leaves me at present.

Yr. affect. son,
JESSE.

CHAPTER VI

ROBBERY-UNDER-ARMS

_Kate's Narrative_

We have started a visitor's book. It opens with press cuttings of
interviews with Professor Bohns, the famous archaeologist, who came to
examine the paleolithic deposits at South Cave. Next are papers relating
to a summons for assault, brought by the late Mr. Trevor against J.
Smith. There is a letter from a big game hunter, Sir Turner Rounde, who
came up the canyon collecting specimen pelts of _ursus horribilis_, which
Jesse maintains is not a grizzly bear. But the gem of our collection is
a letter of lengthy explanation from an eminent Italian cur, who spent a
whole month at the ranch last winter. Nobody is more hospitable, or more
hungry for popularity than my dear man, but I think that special prayers
should be offered for his visitors. He has a motto now:--"Love me: love
my bear, not my missus."

My jealous hero has told the story of an old admirer, once my
fellow-student, who brought me a dumpy piano for which I had so starved,
told me the news, talked shop, and would make me a prima donna--my
life's ambition. The trap was well baited. Lonely, and terrified by the
dread majesty of winter, I craved for the lights, for the crowds, for my
home, for my people, for my art. And there are little things besides
which mean so much to a woman.

Salvator turned out to be a cur, his mission despicable, and yet no
woman born can ever be without some little tenderness for one whose love
misleads him. And I who sought to read a lesson to poor Jesse, learned
one for myself. I am no longer free, but fettered, and proud of the
chains, Love's chains, worth more to me than that lost world.

And yet I wonder if in Heaven there are blessed but weak little souls
like mine, which grow weary at times of the harps, chafed by their
crowns of glory, bored to tears with bliss, ready to give it all up just
for a nice gossip. That would be human.

Where spring has come like a visitation of angels, where winter's
loneliness is changing to summer's happy solitude, I look into mirror
pools, and see contentment. Oh, how can civilized people realize the
wonder and glamour of this paradise? Up in the black pines it is winter
still, but all our towered, bayed, sculptured, sunny precipice is alive
with flowers and birds, while the slopes at the foot of the wall are
white