ettiest view there is betwixt us and
the Rocky Mountains."

They were on the top of Blossom Hill again, and Jerry drew the horse to
a halt before winding down. All the kingdoms of the earth seemed, in
Marietta's eyes, to be spread out before them. There was the rolling
land of farms and villages, and beyond it the line of haze that meant,
they knew, the sea. Tears filled her eyes. Then her gaze came home to an
apple-tree by the side of the road.

"You see that tree, Jerry?" she asked. "Well, I've always called that
Mother's Tree. Once, the last o' May, we borrowed Lote's team and
climbed up here, and here was that tree in full bloom. Mother had a kind
of a pretty way of putting things, and she said 'twas like a bride.
'Some trees are all over pink,' she says, 'but this is white as the
drifted snow.' And the winter mother died, I rode up over this hill
again, to get her some things to be buried in, and I stopped and looked
at that tree. It snowed the night before, and 'twas all over white, and
sparkling in the sun. I spoke right out loud. 'Mother's Tree,' I says."

"Sho!" said Jerry. "You never mentioned that before. Anybody could
almost write something out o' that."

"Could you?" asked Marietta, brightening. "I wish you would. I should
admire to have you."

Jerry's excitement of the night before had waned a little. Suddenly he
felt tired and chill, and, although the purpose of his journey had not
been accomplished, as if the zest of things had gone.

"Marietta," said he, starting on the horse, "do you think much about
growing old?"

"I guess I don't," said Marietta brightly, and at once. "That's a
terrible foolish thing to do. Least, so it seems to me."

"But you don't feel as you did fifteen years ago, do you, Marietta?" He
asked it wistfully.

She was ready with her prompt assurance.

"I don't know 's I do. Don't seem as if 'twould be natural if I did.
Take a tree, take that apple-tree back there--I don't know 's you could
say it had the same feelings it did when it sprouted up out o' the
seeds. We're in a kind of a procession, seems if, marching along
towards--well, I don't know what all. But wherever we're going, it's
all right, I say. It's all right."

They were silent then for a time, each scanning the roadsides and the
vista before them framed in drooping branches and enriched by springing
sward.

"You seem to have a good deal of faith, Marietta," said he suddenly.
"But you ain't much of a hand to