han I have loved myself. But if you could come, if you
could stand at my bedside before it is too late, before it is too
late--too late--'" Willie's voice broke into a wail. The ray of light
was almost fading from his clouded brain.

"Go on," whispered Tom Osby.

"'My queen, my darling--' says Lancelot."

Willie's hands, trembling, fell into his lap. "It's always
that-a-way," he whimpered vaguely, coming now to himself.

"Willie," said Tom Osby, gently, "I ain't right sure I've got it all
down straight, but I think I have. You read her over, and touch her up
here and there where she needs it. Curly, look here. I don't believe
Dan Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if he saw it."

"They sign it with their hearts," said Willie, vaguely. "They always
do."

"He signs it with his heart," said Tom Osby, "and it goes!" He folded
the paper and handed it to Curly.

"Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can," said he, "and make the
run to Sky Top as fast as God'll let you. This letter's all right, and
it goes!"

So presently there rode down the long sunlit street of Heart's Desire,
mounted upon the mad horse Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a
message from a mad brain and two simple hearts,--a courier bound upon a
strange and kindly errand.

The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign, looked gently
down, and the stern walls of the canon seemed to widen and make room
for the messenger as he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent
knight to his distant queen.

"It's like he said," mused Curly to himself, feeling in his pocket for
tobacco as he rode. "It's that-a-way, and I reckon it always has been.
I've felt like that myself sometimes. _Ola, Pinto_! _Vamos_!"

CHAPTER XXV

ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE

_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
Ananias with Spurs_

Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the
bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and
hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed. The mad horse,
Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears
back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an
antelope. The two swept down the long canon from Heart's Desire,
traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed
then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle
thieves and those who pursued t