t figure, buttoned just now into a tan ulster
that looked curiously out of keeping with her close, heavy widow's
bonnet and hanging veil. Sprawled luxuriously in her lap, with one fat,
idle little hand playing above her own gauntleted one on the reins, was
a splendid child something less than a year old, snugly coated and
capped against the cool air of a California February. She watched him
closely as she drove, not moving her eyes from his little face even for
a glance at the village street.

Poor Dan Waters had been six months in his grave, now, and this was the
first glimpse Deaneville had had of his widow. For an unbroken half
year she had not once left the solitude of the big ranch down by the
marsh, or spoken to any one except her old Indian woman servant and the
various "hands" in her employ.

She had been, in the words of Deaneville, "sorta nutty" since her
husband's death. Indeed, poor Shandon had been "sorta nutty" all her
life. Motherless at six, and allowed by her big, half civilized father
to grow up as wild as the pink mallow that fringed the home marshes,
she was regarded with mingled horror and pity by the well-ordered
Deaneville matrons. Jane Dinwoodie and Mary Dickey could well remember
the day she was brought into the district school, her mutinous black
eyes gleaming under a shock of rough hair, her clumsy little apron
tripping her with its unaccustomed strings. The lonely child had been
frantic for companionship, and her direct, even forceful attempts at
friendship had repelled and then amused the Deaneville children. As
unfortunate chance would have it, it was shy, spoiled, adored little
Mary Dickey that Shandon instantly selected for especial worship, and
Mary, already bored by admiration, did not like it. But the little
people would have adjusted matters in their own simple fashion
presently had they been allowed to do so. It was the well-meant
interference of the teacher that went amiss. Miss Larks explained to
the trembling little newcomer that she mustn't smile at Mary, that she
mustn't leave her seat to sit with Mary: it was making poor Mary cry.

Shandon listened to her with rising emotion, a youthful titter or two
from different parts of the room pointing the moral. When the teacher
had finished, she rose with a sudden scream of rage, flung her new
slate violently in one direction, her books in another, and departed,
kicking the stove over with a well-directed foot as she left. Thus she
b