e them no peace. So
Charlie Taylor got up and opened the door, discovering there an excited
little collie.

"Why, Tom," he called, "I thought Cecil's collie was dead!"

"She is," called back Tom.

"No, she ain't neither, for here she is, shakin' like an aspin, and a
beggin' me to go with her. Come out, Tom, and see."

It was Nita, no denying, and the men, perplexed, followed her to Cecil's
shack, where they found him babbling.

But that was the last of her. Cecil said he never felt her on his
feet again. She had performed her final service for him, he said.
The neighbors tried to laugh at the story at first, but they knew the
Taylors wouldn't take the trouble to lie, and as for Cecil, no one would
have ventured to chaff him.

THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT

BART FLEMING took his bride out to his ranch on the plains when she
was but seventeen years old, and the two set up housekeeping in three
hundred and twenty acres of corn and rye. Off toward the west there was
an unbroken sea of tossing corn at that time of the year when the bride
came out, and as her sewing window was on the side of the house which
faced the sunset, she passed a good part of each day looking into that
great rustling mass, breathing in its succulent odors and listening
to its sibilant melody. It was her picture gallery, her opera, her
spectacle, and, being sensible,--or perhaps, being merely happy,--she
made the most of it.

When harvesting time came and the corn was cut, she had much
entertainment in discovering what lay beyond. The town was east, and it
chanced that she had never ridden west. So, when the rolling hills of
this newly beholden land lifted themselves for her contemplation, and
the harvest sun, all in an angry and sanguinary glow sank in the veiled
horizon, and at noon a scarf of golden vapor wavered up and down
along the earth line, it was as if a new world had been made for her.
Sometimes, at the coming of a storm, a whip-lash of purple cloud, full
of electric agility, snapped along the western horizon.

"Oh, you'll see a lot of queer things on these here plains," her husband
said when she spoke to him of these phenomena. "I guess what you see is
the wind."

"The wind!" cried Flora. "You can't see the wind, Bart."

"Now look here, Flora," returned Bart, with benevolent emphasis, "you're
a smart one, but you don't know all I know about this here country. I've
lived here three mortal years, waitin' for you to git up out o