segment of fog in the scene's raw brilliancy.

Ash Hollow looked a darkling descent, the thin pulsations of the little
leaves of ash trees flickering along its sides. The road bent downward
in sharp zigzags, and somewhere below the North Fork ran. The plain
was free, blue clothed and blue vaulted, with "the wonderful winds of
God" flowing between. The conference resulted in a unanimous decision
to halt where they were, and stay in camp till the doctor improved,
moving him from the wagon to a tent.

For four days he lay parched with fever, each breath drawn with a
stifled inner rustling, numerous fine wrinkles traced in a network on
his dried cheeks. Then good care, the open air, and the medicine chest
prevailed. He improved, and Susan turned her face again to the world
and smiled. Such was the changefulness of her mood that her smiles
were as radiant and generously bestowed as her previous demeanor had
been repelling. Even Leff got some of them, and they fell on David
prodigal and warming as the sunshine. Words to match went with them.
On the morning of the day when the doctor's temperature fell and he
could breathe with ease, she said to her betrothed:

"Oh, David, you've been so good, you've made me so fond of you."

It was the nearest she had yet come to the language of lovers. It made
him dizzy; the wonderful look was in his mind.

"You wouldn't let me be good," was all he could stammer. "You didn't
seem as if you wanted me at all."

"Stupid!" she retorted with a glance of beaming reproach, "I'm always
like that when my father's sick."

It was noon of the fifth day that a white spot on the plain told them
the New York Company was in sight. The afternoon was yet young when
the dust of the moving column tarnished the blue-streaked distance.
Then the first wagons came into view, creeping along the winding ribbon
of road. As soon as the advance guard of horsemen saw the camp, pieces
of it broke away and were deflected toward the little group of tents
from which a tiny spiral of smoke went up in an uncoiling, milky skein.
Susan had many questions to answer, and had some ado to keep the
inquirers away from the doctor, who was still too weak to be disturbed.
She was sharp and not very friendly in her efforts to preserve him from
their sympathizing curiosity.

Part of the train had gone by when she heard from a woman who rode up
on a foot-sore nag that the McMurdo's were some distance behind. A
bull bo