elbows, gazed fascinated upon this
discreet vision. Then looking at David he saw that he had turned over
and was lying with his face on his arms. Leff leaned from the blankets
and kicked him, a gentle but meaning kick on the leg.

To his surprise David lifted a wakeful face, the brow furrowed with an
angry frown.

"Can't you go to sleep," he muttered crossly. "Let that girl curl her
hair, and go to sleep like a man."

He dropped his face once more on his arms. Leff felt unjustly snubbed,
but that did not prevent him from watching the faintly defined aura of
shadow which he knew to be the dark young woman he was too shy to look
at when he met her face to face. He continued watching till the brand
died down to a spark and Daddy John withdrew it and went back to his
fire.

CHAPTER IV

In their division of labor David and Leff had decided that one was to
drive the wagon in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This
morning it was David's turn, and as he "rolled out" at the head of the
column he wondered if Leff would now ride beside Miss Gillespie and
lend attentive ear to her family chronicles. But Leff was evidently
not for dallying by the side of beauty. He galloped off alone,
vanishing through the thin mists that hung like a fairy's draperies
among the trees. The Gillespies rode at the end of the train. Even if
he could not see them David felt their nearness, and it added to the
contentment that always came upon him from a fair prospect lying under
a smiling sky. At harmony with the moment and the larger life outside
it, he leaned back against the canvas hood and let a dreamy gaze roam
over the serene and opulent landscape.

Nature had always soothed and uplifted him, been like an opiate to
anger or pain. As a boy his troubles had lost their sting in the
consoling largeness of the open, under the shade of trees, within sight
of the bowing wheat fields with the wind making patterns on the seeded
grain. Now his thoughts, drifting aimless as thistle fluff, went back
to those childish days of country freedom, when he had spent his
vacations at his uncle's farm. He used to go with his widowed mother,
a forlorn, soured woman who rarely smiled. He remembered his irritated
wonder as she sat complaining in the ox cart, while he sent his eager
glance ahead over the sprouting acres to where the log farmhouse--the
haven of fulfilled dreams--stretched in its squat ugliness. He could
feel again the i