n the valley when she
had gone far away to make her home with Ollie and his people in
the city?

An impatient tug at the reins informed Brownie that his mistress
was aware of his existence, and, for a time, the pony was obliged
to pass many a luscious bunch of grass. But soon the reins fell
slack again. The little horse moved slowly, and still more slowly,
until, by the relaxed figure of his rider, he knew it was safe to
again browse on the grass along the path.

So, wondering, dreaming, Sammy Lane rode down the trail that
morning--the trail that is nobody knows how old. And on the hill
back of the Matthews house a team was standing idle in the middle
of the field.

At the big rock on the mountain side, where the trail seems to
pause a moment before starting down to the valley, the girl
slipped from her saddle, and, leaving Brownie to wander at will,
climbed to her favorite seat. Half reclining in the warm sunshine,
she watched the sheep feeding near, and laughed aloud as she saw
the lambs with wagging tails, greedily suckling at their mother's
sides; near by in a black-haw bush a mother bird sat on her nest;
a gray mare, with a week old colt following on unsteady legs, came
over the ridge; and not far away; a mother sow with ten squealing
pigs came out of the timber. Keeping very still the young woman
watched until they disappeared around the mountain. Then, lifting
her arms above her head, she stretched her lithe form out upon the
warm rocky couch with the freedom and grace of a wild thing of the
woods.

Sammy Lane knew nothing of the laws and customs of the, so-called,
best society. Her splendid young womanhood was not the product of
those social traditions and rules that kill the instinct of her
kind before it is fairly born. She was as free and as physically
perfect as any of the free creatures that lived in the hills. And,
keenly alive to the life that throbbed and surged about her, her
woman's heart and soul responded to the spirit of the season. The
droning of the bees in the blossoms that grew in a cranny of the
rock; the tinkle, tinkle of the sheep bells, as the flock moved
slowly in their feeding; and the soft breathing of Mother Earth
was in her ears; while the gentle breeze that stirred her hair
came heavy with the smell of growing things. Lying so, she looked
far up into the blue sky where a buzzard floated on lazy wings. If
she were up there she perhaps could see that world beyond the
hills. Then