my eye on a place with old elms in front of it, and moss on
the shingles, and a well where you pull the bucket up with a rope over a
pulley," said he. "I've got it all laid out and blooming in my heart for
that precious mother of yours. It is where mine used to live," he
explained; "but strangers are in it now. We'll buy them out."

"It will be such a burden on you. And just at the beginning," she
sighed. "I'm afraid, after all, that I'll never be coward enough to
consent to it at the last."

"It's out of your hands now, Agnes," said he; "entirely out of your
hands."

"It is strange how it has shaped out," she reflected after a little
silence; "better, perhaps, than we could have arranged it if we had been
allowed our own way. The one unfortunate thing about it seems to be that
this case is isolated out here in the desert, where it never will do you
a bit of good."

"Except the fee," he reminded her with a gentle smile.

"Oh, the fee--of course."

"But there is a big hurdle to get over before we come to even that."

"You mean----"

She looked at him with a start, the firelight catching her shining
eyes.

"The crisis."

"Day after tomorrow," said she, studying the fire as if to anticipate in
its necromancy what that day offered to their hopes.

The shadow of that grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the
plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and
grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the
crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big _if_
in the life of every man and woman at some straining period of hopes and
schemes.

Words fell away from them; they let the fire grow pale from neglect, and
gray ashes came over the dwindling coals, like hoarfrost upon the bright
salvia against a garden wall. Silence was over the camp; night was deep
around them. In Jerry Boyle's tent, where his mother watched, a dim
light shone through the canvas. It was so still there on that barren
hillside that they could hear the river fretting over the stones of the
rapids below the ford, more than half a mile away.

After a while her hand sought his, and rested warm upon it as she
spoke.

"It was pleasant to dream that, anyway," said she, giving up a great
sigh.

"That's one advantage of dreams; they are plastic material, one can
shape them after the heart's desire," he answered.

"But it was foolish of me to mingle mine with yours so," she obj