muscles under the smooth
skins of the horses! Remember the b-b-bright shining dollars that we
coaxed out of the tightly b-b-buttoned breeches pockets of the
gray-backed Q-Q-Quakers. What more do you ask of life? What else can it
g-g-give?"

"It does not make me happy! I shall never be happy until I have a home,"
she said, still sobbing, and trying to conceal the cause of her grief
from herself as well as from her husband.

Nothing could have astonished the great, well-fed animal by her side
more than this confession. In all his life he had never heaved a sigh.
His contentment was like that of a lion in a forest full of antelopes.
But if he was fierce and cruel to others, he was at least kind to his
mate, and he now put his great paw around her little shoulders and gave
her one of his leonine kisses.

"You are as melancholy as an unstrung d-d-drum," he said. "I must cheer
you up. How would you like a s-s-song? What shall it be? 'Love's Young
D-D-Dream'? All right. Here g-g-goes."

And at the word, he opened his great mouth and stuttered it forth in
stentorian tones that went bellowing among the hills like the echoes of
thunder.

Pepeeta smiled at his kindness and was grateful for his clumsy efforts
at consolation; but they did not dispel her sadness. Her spirits sank
lower and lower. The light seemed to have faded out of the world, and
the streams of joy to have run dry. She sighed again in spite of
herself, and in that sigh exhaled the hope which had sprung from her
heart at the prospects of a new and sweet companionship.

She had divined the cause of her disappointment with an unerring
instinct. It was exactly as she thought. At the last instant, David's
heart had failed him.

On the preceding evening, he had hurried through his "chores," excused
himself from giving an account of the adventures of the day on the
ground of fatigue, and retired to his room to cherish in his heart the
memories of that beautiful face and the prospects of the future. He
could not sleep. For hours he tossed on his bed or sat in the window
looking out into the night, and when at last he fell into an uneasy
slumber his dreams were haunted by two faces which struggled ceaselessly
to crowd each other from his mind. One was the young and passionate
countenance of the gypsy, and the other was that of his beautiful mother
with her pale, carven features, her snow-white hair, her pensive and
unearthly expression. They both looked at him, and