the nectar of the gods!" cried Kitty with a deep breath of
satisfaction, as she lifted her smiling face from the bright water to
look up at him. And then she drank again.

"And now, if you please, sir, you may bring me some of that
water-cress; we'll sit over there in the shade, and who cares whether
Granite Basin, the Mannings, and your fellow cow-punchers, are fifteen
or fifty miles away?"

He brought a generous bunch of the water-cress, and stretched himself
full length beside her, as she sat on the ground under a tall sycamore.

"Selah!" he laughed contentedly. "We seem to lack only the book of
verses, the loaf and the jug; the wilderness is here, all right, and
that's a perfectly good bough up there, and, of course, you could
furnish the song; I might recite 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,'
but, alas! we haven't even a flask and biscuit."

"What a pity that you should be so near and yet so far from paradise!"
she retorted quickly. Then she added, with a mischievous smile, "It just
happens that I have a sandwich in my saddle pocket."

"Won't you sing? Please do," he returned, with an eagerness that amused
her.

But she shook her head reprovingly. "We would still lack the jug of
wine, you know, and, really, I don't think that paradise is for
cow-punchers, anyway, do you?"

"Evidently not," he answered. And at her jesting words a queer feeling
of rebellion possessed him. Why should he be condemned to years of
loneliness? Why must he face a life without the companionship of a mate?
If the paradise he had sought so hard to attain were denied him, why
should he not still take what happiness he might?

He was lying flat on his back, his hands clasped beneath his head,
watching an eagle that wheeled, a tiny black speck, high under the blue
arch of the sky. He seemed to have forgotten his companion.

Kitty leaned toward him, and held a sprig of water-cress over his
upturned face. "I haven't a penny," she said, "but I'll give you this."

He sat up quickly. "Even at that price, my thoughts might cost you too
much. But you haven't told me what you have done with our dear friend
the professor? Haven't you a guilty conscience, deserting him like
this?"

Kitty held up both hands in a gesture of dismay. "Don't, Patches, please
don't. Ugh! if you only knew how good it is to be with a _man_ again!"

He laughed aloud in a spirit of reckless defiance. "And Phil is over in
Granite Basin. I neglected to tell you that h