terial aspect
of it just then. It was a good fence. Fifteen years later he strolled
one afternoon, cigar in mouth, across the wheat-field where the wood
had been, and inspected the fence he had built alone that summer, away
back. The rails had grown gray from the effect of time and storms, and
a rider was missing here and there, but the structure was a sound one
generally, and still equal to all needs. It was a great fence, well
built. He looked at the wasting evidence of the great ax strokes upon
the rail ends, and said, as did Brakespeare, when he visited the castle
of Huguemont and noted where his sword had chipped the stairway stone
in former fight; "It was a gallant fray."

There was the getting of pay--the selling of a Morgan yearling colt
sufficed the owner of the land for that--and the end of one part of one
human being's life was reached. He went to town again and lived there
a week or two. A life not held in bonds, but somehow under all
control. It was curious; he could not understand it; but, even in the
wood, he had out-grown Mrs. Rolfston. He was with her much. There was
no let nor hindrance to their united reckless being, but all was
different from the beginning. He was not selfish with her; he grew
more courteous and thoughtful, yet the woman knew she could not keep
him. There were stormy episodes and tender ones, threats and tears,
and plottings and pleadings, and all to the same unavailing end. Your
woman of thirty of this sort is a Hecla ever in eruption, but becoming
sometimes, like Hecla, in the ages, ice-surrounded. She has her
trials, this woman, but her trials never kill her. The rending of the
earth, earthy, is never fatal. She recovers. With her, good digestion
ever waits on appetite, though an occasional appetite be faulty.

And one day Grant Harlson left the town, his face turned cityward. The
country boy--this later young man of the summer--was no more. To fill
his place among the mass of bipeds who conduct the affairs of the world
so badly and so blunderingly, was but one added to the throng of
strugglers in one of men's great permanent encampments.

CHAPTER XIV.

A RUGGED LOST SHEEP.

The journal of Marie Bashkirtseff is a great revelation of the hopes
and imaginings and sufferings of a girl just entering that period of
life when woman's world begins. Many upon two continents have been
affected by the depths and sadness of it, yet it is but a primer, the
mere