tle farther from him and murmured, sadly:

"Oh!" as if he had classed himself with the "man" he had been
describing. Instantly he felt her withdrawal and grew grave again, as if
he would atone.

"Wait till you see this sky at the dawn," he said. "It will burn red
fire off there in the east like a hearth in a palace, and all this dome
will glow like a great pink jewel set in gold. If you want a classy sky,
there you have it! Nothing like it in the East!"

There was a strange mingling of culture and roughness in his speech. The
girl could not make him out; yet there had been a palpitating
earnestness in his description that showed he had felt the dawn in his
very soul.

"You are--a--poet, perhaps?" she asked, half shyly. "Or an artist?" she
hazarded.

He laughed roughly and seemed embarrassed. "No, I'm just a--bum! A sort
of roughneck out of a job."

She was silent, watching him against the starlight, a kind of
embarrassment upon her after his last remark. "You--have been here
long?" she asked, at last.

"Three years." He said it almost curtly and turned his head away, as if
there were something in his face he would hide.

She knew there was something unhappy in his life. Unconsciously her tone
took on a sympathetic sound. "And do you get homesick and want to go
back, ever?" she asked.

His tone was fairly savage now. "No!"

The silence which followed became almost oppressive before the Boy
finally turned and in his kindly tone began to question her about the
happenings which had stranded her in the desert alone at night.

So she came to tell him briefly and frankly about herself, as he
questioned--how she came to be in Arizona all alone.

"My father is a minister in a small town in New York State. When I
finished college I had to do something, and I had an offer of this
Ashland school through a friend of ours who had a brother out here.
Father and mother would rather have kept me nearer home, of course, but
everybody says the best opportunities are in the West, and this was a
good opening, so they finally consented. They would send post-haste for
me to come back if they knew what a mess I have made of things right at
the start--getting out of the train in the desert."

"But you're not discouraged?" said her companion, half wonderingly.
"Some nerve you have with you. I guess you'll manage to hit it off in
Ashland. It's the limit as far as discipline is concerned, I understand,
but I guess you'll put one o