harley got it yesterday. I found that story about Jacob and Rachel
and the weak-eyed girl. It's awful short."

"But it tells a good deal, Joan."

Joan seemed thinking over how much the short story really told, her
eyes far away on the elusive, ever-receding blue curtain that was down
between her and the world.

"Yes, it tells a lot," she sighed. "But Jake must not have been very
bright. Well, he was a cowman, anyhow; he wasn't running sheep."

"I think he went into the sheep business afterwards," Mackenzie said,
diverted by her original comment on the old tale.

"Yes, when his girls got big enough to do the work!" The resentment of
her hard years was in Joan's voice, the hardness of unforgiving regret
for all that had been taken from her life.

Mackenzie felt a sweep of depression engulf him like a leaping wave.
Joan was in the humor to profit by any arrangement that would break
her bondage to sheep; Tim Sullivan had been bringing her up,
unconsciously, but none the less effectively, to fit into this scheme
for marrying her to his old friend's rakish son. When the day came for
Joan to know of the arrangement, she would leap toward it as toward an
open door.

Still, it should not concern him. Once he had believed there was a
budding blossom on his hitherto dry branch of romance; if he had been
so ungenerous as to take advantage of Joan's loneliness and urge the
promise to florescence, they might have been riding down out of the
sheeplands together that day.

It would have been a venture, too, he admitted. For contact with the
world of men must prove a woman, even as the hardships of the range
must prove a man. Perhaps the unlimited variety displayed before her
eyes would have made Joan dissatisfied with her plain choice.

At that moment it came to him that perhaps Joan was to be tested and
proved here, even as he was being tested in Tim Sullivan's balance for
his fitness to become a master over sheep. Here were two fair samples
of men out of the world's assorted stock--himself and Reid. One of
them, deliberate, calm, assured of his way, but with little in his
hand; the other a grig that could reel and spin in the night-lights,
and flutter to a merry tune.

With Mackenzie the rewards of life would come to her slowly, but with
a sweet savor of full understanding and appreciation as they were won.
Many of them most desired might never be attained; many more might be
touched and withdrawn in the mockery that fate