think I can understand why your uncle thought it would be well for me
to come to Kansas," Eloise said at last. "There is an inspiration and
soothing restfulness in a thing like this. Our mountains are so huge and
tragical; and even their silences are not always gentle. And our plains
are dry and gray. And yet I love the valley of the Santa Fe, and the old
Ortiz and Sandia peaks, and the red sunset's stain on the
Sangre-de-Christo. Many a time I have lifted up my eyes to them for
help, as the shepherd did to his Judean hills when he sang his psalms of
hope and victory."

"Yes, Nature is kind to us if we will let her be. Jondo told me that
long ago, and I've proved it since. But I have always loved the
prairies. And this ridge here belongs to me," I replied.

Eloise looked up inquiringly.

"I'll tell you why. When I was a little boy, years ago, a day-dreaming,
eager-hearted little boy, we camped here one night. That was my first
trip over the trail to Santa Fe. You haven't forgotten it and what a big
brown bob-cat I looked like when I got there. I grew like weeds in a
Kansas corn-field on that trip."

"Oh, I remember you. Go on," Eloise said, laughingly.

"That night after supper, everybody had left camp--Mat and Bev were
fishing--and I was alone and lonely, so I came up here to find what I
could see of the next day's trail. It was such an hour as this. And as I
watched the twilight color deepen, my own horizon widened, and I think
the soul of a man began, in that hour, to look out through the little
boy's eyes; and a new mile-stone was set here to make a landmark in my
life-trail. The boy who went back slowly to the camp that night was not
the same little boy that had run up here to spy out the way of the next
day's journey."

The afterglow was deepening to purple; the pink cloud-flecks were
turning gray in the east, and a kaleidoscope of softest rose and tender
green and misty lavender filled the lengthening shadows of the twilight
prairie.

"Eloise, I had a longing that night, still unfulfilled. I wish I dared
to tell you what it was."

I turned to look at the fair girl-woman beside me. In the twilight her
eyes were always like stars; and the golden hair and the pink bloom of
her cheeks seemed richer in their shadowy setting. To-night her gown was
white--like the Greek dress she had worn at Mat's wedding, on the night
when she met Beverly in the little side porch at midnight. Why did I
recall that here?

"W