re had the goatherd hidden himself?
She nodded without bringing her glance to meet Harboro's.

"I know a good many of the Eagle Pass people. I've never seen you
before."

"I thought you must be a stranger," she replied. She brought her glance to
his face now and seemed to explore it affectionately, as one does a new
book by a favorite author. "I've never seen you before, either."

"I've been to several entertainments at the Mesquite Club."

"Oh! ... the Mesquite Club. I've never been there."

He looked at her in his steadfast fashion for a moment, and then changed
the subject. "You have rather more than your share of shade here. I had no
idea there was such a pretty place in Eagle Pass." He glanced at the old
mesquite-tree in the yard. It was really quite a tree.

"Yes," she assented. She added, somewhat falteringly: "But it seems
dreadfully lonesome sometimes."

(I do not forget that path which led from Sylvia's back door down to the
Rio Grande, nor the men who traversed it; yet I believe that she spoke
from her heart, and that her words were essentially true.)

"Perhaps you're not altogether at home in Eagle Pass: I mean, this isn't
really your home?"

"No. We came from San Antonio a year ago, my father and I."

His glance wandered up the brick walk to the cottage door, but if Sylvia
perceived this and knew it for a hint, she did not respond.

Harboro thought of other possibilities. He turned toward the desert.
"There, the sun's dipping down beyond that red ridge," he said. "It will
be cooler now. Won't you walk with me?--I'm not going far."

She smiled happily. "I'd like to," she admitted.

And so Sylvia and Harboro walked together out toward the desert. It was,
in fact, the beginning of a series of walks, all taken quite as informally
and at about the same hour each day.

CHAPTER II

Some of the cruder minds of Eagle Pass made a sorry jest over the fact
that nobody "gave the bride away" when she went to the altar--either then
or during the brief period of courtship. Her father went to the wedding,
of course; but he was not the kind of person you would expect to
participate conspicuously in a ceremony of that sort. He was so decidedly
of the black-sheep type that the people who assumed management of the
affair considered it only fair to Sylvia (and to Harboro) to keep him in
the background. Sylvia had never permitted Harboro to come to the house to
see her. She had drawn a somewhat imaginary