ly lighted room. And it seemed to her that she had
gone to sleep at once, and had awakened without remembering how she had
gotten to bed.

But she was wide awake in an instant. The bed stood near one end of an
enormous chamber. The adobe walls resembled a hall in an ancient feudal
castle, stone-floored, stone-walled, with great darkened rafters running
across the ceiling. The few articles of furniture were worn out and
sadly dilapidated. Light flooded into the room from two windows on the
right of the fireplace and two on the left, and another large window
near the bedstead. Looking out from where she lay, Madeline saw a dark,
slow up-sweep of mountain. Her eyes returned to the cheery, snapping
fire, and she watched it while gathering courage to get up. The room was
cold. When she did slip her bare feet out upon the stone floor she very
quickly put them back under the warm blankets. And she was still in
bed trying to pluck up her courage when, with a knock on the door and a
cheerful greeting, Florence entered, carrying steaming hot water.

"Good mawnin', Miss Hammond. Hope you slept well. You sure were tired
last night. I imagine you'll find this old rancho house as cold as a
barn. It'll warm up directly. Al's gone with the boys and Bill. We're to
ride down on the range after a while when your baggage comes."

Florence wore a woolen blouse with a scarf round her neck, a
short corduroy divided skirt, and boots; and while she talked she
energetically heaped up the burning wood in the fireplace, and laid
Madeline's clothes at the foot of the bed, and heated a rug and put that
on the floor by the bedside. And lastly, with a sweet, direct smile, she
said:

"Al told me--and I sure saw myself--that you weren't used to being
without your maid. Will you let me help you?"

"Thank you, I am going to be my own maid for a while. I expect I do
appear a very helpless individual, but really I do not feel so. Perhaps
I have had just a little too much waiting on."

"All right. Breakfast will be ready soon, and after that we'll look
about the place."

Madeline was charmed with the old Spanish house, and the more she saw of
it the more she thought what a delightful home it could be made. All
the doors opened into a courtyard, or patio, as Florence called it. The
house was low, in the shape of a rectangle, and so immense in size that
Madeline wondered if it had been a Spanish barracks. Many of the rooms
were dark, without windows, a