aughter from the cottages a hundred yards away, and Mrs. Hopps
crooning over her baby.

Presently the night shift went down to the powerhouse, the men taking
great boyish leaps on the steep trail. Some of the lighted windows were
blotted out--the Hopps', the cook-house light. The singing pole line
above Paul's head ceased abruptly, and with a little rising whine the
opposite pole line took up the buzzing currant. That meant that the
copper line had been cut in, and the aluminum one would be "cold" for
the night.

Minutes went by, eventless. Half an hour, an hour--still Paul sat
staring into the velvet dark and wrestling with bitter discouragement
and homesickness.

"Lord, what a PLACE!" he said once or twice under his breath.

Finally, feeling cramped and chilly, he went stiffly indoors, through
the hot, bright halls, that smelled of varnish and matting, to his room.

The next day was exactly like the five preceding days--hot, restless,
aimless; and the next night Paul sat on the porch again, and listened
to the rush of the river, and Min Tolley's laugh at the "five hundred"
table, and the Hopps' baby's lullaby. And again he composed his
resignation, and calculated that it would take three days for it to
reach San Francisco, and another three for him to receive their
acceptance of it--another week at least of Kirkwood!

On the seventh day the Chisholms rode down the trail that followed the
pole line, and arrived in a hospitable uproar. Alan Chisholm, some five
years older than Paul, was a fine-looking, serious, dark youth, a
fellow of not many words, being given rather to silent appreciation of
his sister's chatter than to speech of his own. Miss Chisholm was very
tall, very easy in manner, and powdered just now to her eyelashes with
fine yellow dust. Paul thought her too tall and too large for beauty,
but he liked her voice, and the fashion she had of crinkling up her
eyes when she smiled. He sat on the porch while the Chisholms went
upstairs to brush and change, and thought that the wholesome noise of
their splashing and calling, opening drawers, and banging doors was a
pleasant change from the usual quiet of the house.

Miss Chisholm was the first to reappear. She was followed by Min and
Mrs. Tolley, and was asking questions at a rate that kept both
answering at once. Had her kodak films come? Was Minnie going to have
some little sense and be married in a dress she could get some use out
of? How were the guin