at grows in your
front yard to make your mother cry for the Highlands she sees when her
eyes blur with homesickness. You were crying when I came--crying
because you're lonely. It's a big, wild country--the Black Rim. It's a
country for men to ride hell-whooping through the sage and camas
grass, with guns slung at their hips, but it's no country for a little
person like you to try and carry on a feud because her father made
one. You're--too little!"

He did not touch her, his face did not come near her face. But in his
eyes, in his voice, in the tender, one-sided little smile, there was
something,--Mary Hope caught her breath, feeling as if she had been
kissed.

"You little, lonesome girl! There's going to be a party at Cottonwood
Spring, a week from Friday night. It's a secret--a secret for you. And
you won't tell a soul that you were the first to know--and you'll
come, you girl, because it's your party. And not a soul will know it's
your party. If your father's Scotch is too hard for dancing--you'll
come just the same. You'll come, because the secret is for you. And--"
He thought that he read something in her eyes and hastened to
forestall her intention "--and you won't go near Cottonwood Spring
before the time of the party, because that wouldn't be playing fair.

"Don't be lonely, girl. The world is full of pleasant things, just
waiting to pop out at you from behind every bush. If you're good and
kind and honest with life, the Fates are going to give you the best
they've got. Don't be lonely! Just wait for the pleasant things in
to-morrow and to-morrow--in all the to-morrows. And one of them, girl,
is going to show you the sweetest thing in life. That's love, you girl
with the tears back of your Scotch blue eyes. But wait for it--and
take the little pleasant things that minutes have hidden away in the
to-morrows. And one of the pleasant times will be hidden at Cottonwood
Spring, a week from Friday night. Wonder what it will be, girl. And if
any one tries to tell it, put your hands over your ears, so that you
won't hear it. Wait--and keep wondering, and come to Cottonwood Spring
next Friday night. Adios, girl."

He looked into her eyes, smiling a little. Then, turning suddenly, he
left her without a backward glance. Left her with nothing to spoil
the haunting cadence of his voice, nothing to lift the spell of
tender prophecy his words had laid upon her soul. When he was quite
gone, when she heard the clatter of hi