d star, the "captain jewel" of
them all, and her eye sought its whereabouts again. In others she
could see tremulous tinges of red and blue; but this seemed to be the
pure spirit of light. Unconsciously she had put her arm around the
dog, as if to hold on to this earth, and Shep, whose affection had been
steadily growing, nudged up closer and gave her a sense of warm
companionship.

When Steve returned from his mysterious errand, he looked at her a
moment and then fetched an armful of wood. The fire, to serve better
the purposes of cooking, had been allowed to burn down to coals, and
the smouldering embers now gave so little light that the face and
figure of his guest were losing themselves in obscurity. As this state
of affairs hardly suited him, he piled on the dry mesquite brush and
fanned it with his hat into leaping flames. When Janet was lit up to
his satisfaction, he put down the hat and resumed his earthen lounge.

As he stretched himself out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested,
the atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of
safety. His deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the
slowness of a drawl, was the natural voice of that big starry world so
generous of time. Occasionally he made a remark which ought to have
been flattery, but which, coming from him, was so quiet and true that
one might float on it to topics of unknown depth. He was so evidently
interested in everything she said, and his attention was so
single-minded and sincere, that Janet was soon chatting again upon the
subject of her recent circumnavigation of the prairie, which, as she
now saw it in the light of the present, seemed more and more a sea of
flowers--as the Past always does. Indeed, the whole recent course of
her experience was such a novelty--the trip to Texas was her first real
adventure in the world--that she saw things with the new vision of a
traveler; and the present situation, turning out so happily, put the
cap-sheaf on that dream which is truly Life. Janet, recently delivered
from all danger, and yet sitting right in the middle of her adventures,
had a double advantage; she was living in the present as well as the
past, breathing the sweetness of the air, looking up at the big flock
of stars and seeing in them all nothing less than the divine
shepherding.

"But, of all the wonderful things I ever saw," she exclaimed. "Why, it
was worth walking all day to see it."

"What was it