heaven."

Patty was aware that the old lady was smiling at her across the table.
"If I had lived like that for months, did you say? My dear girl, we
lived for years in that little shack--you can see it from where you
sit--it's the tool house, now. Mr. Samuelson built it with his own
hands when there weren't a half-dozen white men in the hills, and
until it was completed we lived in a tepee!"

"You've lived here a long time."

"Yes, a long, long time. I was the first white woman to come into this
part of the hill country to live. This was the first ranch to be
established in the hills, but we have a good many neighbors now--and
such nice neighbors! One never really appreciates friends and
neighbors until a time--like this. Then one begins to know. A long
time ago, before I knew, I used to hate this place. Sometimes I used
to think I would go crazy, with the loneliness--the vastness of it
all. I used to go home and make long visits every year, and then--the
children came, and it was different." The woman paused and her eyes
strayed to the open window and rested upon the bold headland of a
mighty mountain that showed far down the valley.

"And--you love it, now?" Patty asked, softly, as she poured French
dressing over crisp lettuce leaves.

"Yes--I love it, now. After the children came it was all different. I
never want to leave the valley, now. I never shall leave it. I am an
old woman, and my world has narrowed down to my home, and my
valley--my husband, and my friends and neighbors." She looked up
guiltily, with a tiny little laugh. "Do you know, during those first
years I must have been an awful fool. I used to loathe it all--loathe
the country--the men, who ate in their shirt sleeves and blew into
their saucers, and their women. It was the uprising that brought me to
a realization of the true worth of these people--" The little woman's
voice trailed off into silence, and Patty glanced up from her salad to
see that the old eyes were once more upon the far blue headland, and
the woman's thoughts were evidently very far away. She came back to
the present with an apology: "Why bless you, child, forgive me! My old
wits were back-trailing, as the cowboys would say. You have finished
your salad, come, let's go out onto the porch, where we can get the
afternoon breeze and be comfortable." She led the way through the
living-room where she left the girl for a moment, to tiptoe upstairs
for a peep at the sick man. "He's a