heart with pity? Were the doctors surely right,--was
this the land of health?

Again footsteps approached the tent, stirring up the dry sand, and
again Carol held her breath until they had passed. Then she grimly
closed the windows on the third side of her room, and smiled to herself
as she thought, "I'll get them up again before David is awake."

But she crept into bed and slept at last.

Early, very early, she was awakened by the sunlight pouring upon the
flaps at the windows. It was five o'clock, and very cold. Carol
wrapped a blanket about her and peeked in upon her husband.

"Good morning," she greeted him brightly. "Isn't it lovely and bright?
How is my nice old boy? Nearly well?"

"Just fine. How did you sleep?"

"Like a top," she declared.

"Were you afraid?"

"Um, not exactly," she denied, glancing at him with sudden suspicion.

"Did the wind blow all your flaps down?"

"How did you know?"

"Oh, I was up long ago looking in on you. We'll get a room over in the
Main Building to-day. It costs more, but the accommodations are so
much better. We are directly on the path from the street, so we hear
every passing footstep."

Carol blushed. "I am not afraid," she insisted.

"We'll get a room just the same. It will be easier for you all the way
around."

Carol flung open the door and gazed out upon the land of health. The
long desolate mesa land stretched far away to the mountains, now
showing pink and rosy in the early sunshine. The little white tents
about them were as suggestively pitiful as before. There were no
trees, no flowers, no carpeting grass, to brighten the desolation.

Bare, bleak, sandy slopes reached to the mountains on every side.
David sat up in bed and looked out with her.

"Just a long bare slope of sand, isn't it?" she whispered. "Sand and
cactus,--no roses blooming here upon the sandy slopes."

"Yes, just sandy slopes to the mountains,--but Carol, they are
sunny,--bare and bleak, but still they are sunny for us. Let's not
lose sight of that."

CHAPTER XI

THE OLD TEACHER

"Chicago, Illinois.

"Dear Carol and David--

"It is most remarkable that you two can keep on laughing away out there
by yourselves. It makes me think perhaps there is something fine in
this being married business that sort of makes up for the rest of it.
I think it must take an exceptionally good eyesight to discern sunshine
on the slopes of sickness. If I were traveling tha