is so dry it's almost
dead, the scenery is conspicuously absent, the smell of leather and
horseflesh isn't especially pleasant--and yet you are not noticing
these things. The bigness and the newness of the land have got you,
Miss Burnaby. You don't know it and you can't put it into words--I
can't myself--but the feeling is there. You are one of us at heart."

"Of 'us'?"

"The people of the new lands--the pioneers, if you choose, the modern
colonists, the trail blazers."

"I wonder." The idea was new. She considered it gravely. "My parents
were city folks; I have lived in the city all my life. And yet I think
I have the feeling you speak of. Only I can't put it into words
either."

"If you could you would be the most famous person in the world. The
song is there, waiting the singer. It has always been there, waiting,
and the singer has never come. We who hear it in our hearts have no
voices. Now and then some genius strikes the chord by accident, almost,
and loses it. I don't think any one will ever find it completely. But
if some one should! Heavens! What a grand harmony it would be."

She glanced at him curiously. He was not looking at her. His eyes were
on a little cloud, a white island in a sapphire sea. He seemed to be
paying no attention whatever to the road, to his surroundings. But as
one of the chestnuts stumbled over a loose stone he lifted him
instantly with the reins and administered a sharp word of reproof and a
light cut of the whip.

"He didn't mean to stumble," said Clyde.

"He should have meant not to. A horse that isn't tired and is paying
attention to business should never stumble on a road. It's the slouchy
horse that breaks his kind owner's neck some day. Now I'm going to let
them out."

So far as Clyde could observe, he did absolutely nothing. But
immediately, as though some subtle current had passed from his hands
along the lines, the horses' heads came up, their ears pricked forward,
their stride quickened and lengthened, and the measured beat of their
hoofs became a quickstep. The horses themselves seemed to exult in the
change of pace, filling their great lungs through widened nostrils and
expelling the air noisily, shaking their heads, proud of themselves and
their work.

Mrs. Wade laid a nervous hand on her husband's arm as the light wagon
rattled down a descent. But Clyde sat quietly, her lips slightly
parted, her eyes shining as the warm wind poured past in a torrent
plucking a