said, "I'll take charge of that."

She started and turned with a look of alarm, a look which changed to
amazement, to delight. "Oh!" she gasped. "Where did _you_ come from?"

"From the Navajo reservation," I replied calmly.

"But how did you _get here_?"

"By train, like yourself."

"But when--how long ago?"

"About thirty minutes," I laughed. "I'm a wizard at making close
connections." Then, seeing that she must know all about it at once, I
added, "Come into the station restaurant, and while we are eating
breakfast I will tell you where I have been and what brought me back so
soon."

While waiting for our coffee I took from my valise a bracelet of silver,
a broad band shaped and ornamented by some Navajo silversmith. "Hold out
your arm," I commanded. She obeyed, and I clasped the barbaric gyve
about her wrist. "That is a sign of your slavery," I said gravely.

Smilingly, meditatively, she fingered it, realizing dimly the grim truth
which ran beneath my jesting. She was about to take on a relationship
which must inevitably bring work and worry as well as joy.

(That silver band has never left her wrist for a moment. For twenty-two
years she has worn it, keeping it bright with service for me, for her
children and for her friends. There is something symbolic in the fact
that it has never lost its clear luster and that it has never tarnished
the arm it adorns.)

Her joy in this present, her astonishment at my unexpected appearance
on the railway platform, amused and delighted me. I could scarcely
convince her that at six o'clock on Saturday night I was in a New Mexico
town, waiting for the eastern express. It was all a piece of miraculous
adventure on my part, but her evident pleasure in its successful working
out made me rich--and very humble. "What did you do it for?" she asked;
then, with a look of dismay, she added, "What am I going to do with you
in Hanover?"

"I think I can find something to do," I answered, and entered upon a
detailed statement of my plan. "I want you to see the mountains. We'll
set our wedding day for the eighteenth--that will give us a week in
Colorado, and enable us to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the old folks at
the homestead. You say you have never seen a real mountain--well, here's
your chance! Say the word, and I'll take you into the heart of the San
Juan Range. I'll show you the splendors of Ouray and the Uncompagre."

Holding the floor, in order that she might not have a cha