e's a good trail up to the hog's back opposite the
_Brule_."

They watched her leap down from the buckboard and mount the saddle, a
little awkward at first whether to put the right knee fore or aft, from
her Eastern training to a side saddle; and side saddles in the range
country are rare as low neck gowns and tuxedo coats; but once she had
caught the far stirrup, riding was riding. She had the pace, and the
two figures loped off up the burn for the hill known as the _Brule_,
Wayland turning and waving his hat.

"Now the Lord have mercy on your soul, Williams. This ride will settle
it; an' A'm not darin' t' hope which way it goes! A 'm not keen to go
back empty-handed with yon little old lady payin' m' expenses heavy an'
generous; but yet--but yet--"

"Yet what?" asked Mrs. Williams, leaning forward between the two men.

"Th' great joy comes only once; an' when it cam' t' me, A put a
handspike thro' it, an' kept it."

He had come to her that morning with a look on his face that she had
not dreamed a human face could wear. She wondered if all men crucified
for right won such joy. And he did not tread earth. He trod air.
Eleanor could not trust her eyes to meet his. She felt their light
burning to the centre of her soul. What was it? Was it renunciation?
The thought turned her faint. Her determination to break his
resolution seemed the cheap obtrusion of egotism on the great mission
of a devoted life. Then, going up the hog's back trail along the rim
of the Ridge, they were facing the Holy Cross Mountain. The glint of
the morning sun on the far snows shone like diamonds, a tiared jeweled
thing poised in mid-heaven like a crown held by invisible hands; the
base of the lower mountain outlines melting and losing edge in the
purple shadows; the crown only, shining diademed, winged with opal
light.

"Look Dick," she said pointing with her riding crop, "do you remember
the night on the Ridge? Do you remember about the snow flakes massing
to the avalanche? It has--hasn't it? The Nation has wakened up."

Wayland looked ahead. He couldn't answer. 'Remember the night on the
Ridge?' He had a lump in his throat and an ache at his heart from
never letting himself remember it. By that strange perversity, which
we all know in ourselves, he couldn't talk. The hundred and one things
he had wanted to ask, died on his lips in a dumbness of gladness. Of
course, you, dear reader, on the return of a husband or wi