sunsets the world had ever seen.

A deep light shone in his young eyes which, had the girl been wise,
she might have seen. But Tharon was as elemental as the kitten chasing
a moth out by the pansy bed, and could look in a man's face with the
unconscious eyes of a child.

Now she watched the pageant of the dying day in a rapt delight.

"Billy," she said presently, "I've often wondered if there's another
place in all the world as lovely as our Valley. Jim Last told me once
that there were places so much bigger out below, that we wouldn't be a
patchin' to them. Don't seem like there could be."

She lifted her slim body up along the doorpost and looked long and
earnestly all up and down the wonderful stretch of country that lay
along the Wall from north to south. She could see the tiny dots that
went for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at the
head there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blur
that was Courtrey's Stronghold. Her lips compressed at sight of it.

"Nope," she said, shaking her head, "I don't believe he meant it. He
used to tease me a lot, you know. It's an awful big valley, an' no
mistake."

The rider, who had drifted up along the Wall five years before, looked
down at the playing kitten and smiled with a lean crinkling of his
cheeks.

"It's a sure-enough big place, Tharon," he said gravely, "an' it's
lovely as Eden."

"Huh?" said Tharon, "where's that, Billy?"

The boy sobered and looked up into her blue eyes.

"Why, Tharon," he whispered, "that's where th' heart is."

For a moment she regarded him. Then she smiled.

"Billy," she said severely, "you're stringin' your boss. I'm sure
goin' to fire you, some day, like I ben a-threatenin'."

"Do--an' hire me over!"

"Nope."

The girl shut her pretty lips and the man's hand crept softly up and
touched her wrist where it lay against her knee.

"All right," he said airily, "gimme my time. I quit."

There was an odd note in his voice, as if under the play there was a
purpose. For a second Tharon held her breath.

"What you mean, Billy?" she asked so sharply that the boy jumped.

Then he laughed, still in that light fashion.

"What I said," he affirmed doggedly.

But the mistress of Last's took a clutch on his hand that was
authority in force and leaned down to look anxiously in his face.

"Why, Billy," she said with a quiver in her voice, "Last's couldn't
run without you, boy. An' what's more, I tho