ze the feeling. Strange lands, and most of all the
West, held alluring promise. She sat in her rocker, and could not help
but dream of places where people were a little broader gauge, a little
less prone to narrow, conventional judgments. Other people had done as
she proposed doing--cut loose from their established environment, and
made a fresh start in countries where none knew or cared whence they
came or who they were. Why not she? One thing was certain: Granville,
for all she had been born there, and grown to womanhood there, was now
no place for her. The very people who knew her best would make her
suffer most.

She spent that evening going thoroughly over the papers and writing
letters to various school boards, taking a chance at one or two she
found in the Manitoba paper, but centering her hopes on the country
west of the Rockies. Her letters finished, she took stock of her
resources--verified them, rather, for she had not so much money that
she did not know almost where she stood. Her savings in the bank
amounted to three hundred odd dollars, and cash in hand brought the sum
to a total of three hundred and sixty-five. At any rate, she had
sufficient to insure her living for quite a long time. And she went to
bed feeling better than she had felt for two weeks.

Kitty Brooks came again the next afternoon, and, being a young woman of
wide experience and good sense, made no further attempt to influence
Hazel one way or the other.

"I hate to see you go, though," she remarked truthfully. "But you'll
like the West--if it happens that you go there. You'll like it better
than the East; there's a different sort of spirit among the people.
I've traveled over some of it, and if Jimmie's business permitted we'd
both like to live there. And--getting down to strictly practical
things--a girl can make a much better living there. Wages are high.
And--who knows?--you might capture a cattle king."

Hazel shrugged her shoulders, and Mrs. Kitty forbore teasing. After
that they gossiped and compared notes covering the two years since they
had met until it was time for Kitty to go home.

Very shortly thereafter--almost, it seemed, by return mail--Hazel got
replies to her letters of inquiry. The fact that each and every one
seemed bent on securing her services astonished her.

"Schoolma'ams must certainly be scarce out there," she told herself.
"This is an embarrassment of riches. I'm going somewhere, but which