In her desire to be alone and to evade the now significant attentions of Emile, she took advantage of the bustle that followed the hurried transfer of furniture and articles from the house to escape through the garden to the outlying fields. Striking into one of the dusty lanes that she remembered, she wandered on for half an hour until her progress and meditation were suddenly arrested. She had come upon a long chasm or crack in the soil, full twenty feet wide and as many in depth, crossing her path at right angles. She did not remember having seen it before; the track of wheels went up to its precipitous edge; she could see the track on the other side, but the hiatus remained, unbridged and uncovered. It was not there yesterday. She glanced right and left; the fissure seemed to extend, like a moat or ditch, from the distant road to the upland between her and the great wheat valley below, from which she was shut off. An odd sense of being in some way a prisoner confronted her. She drew back with an impatient start, and perhaps her first real sense of indignation. A voice behind her, which she at once recognized, scarcely restored her calmness. “You can't get across there, miss.” She turned. It was the young inventor from the wheat ranch, on horseback and with a clean face. He had just ridden out of the grain on the same side of the chasm as herself. “But you seem to have got over,” she said bluntly. “Yes, but it was further up the field. I reckoned that the split might be deeper but not so broad in the rock outcrop over there than in the adobe here. I found it so and jumped it.” He looked as if he might--alert, intelligent, and self-contained. He lingered a moment, and then continued:-- “I'm afraid you must have been badly shaken and a little frightened up there before the chimneys came down?” “No,” she was glad to say briefly, and she believed truthfully, “I wasn't frightened. I didn't even know it was an earthquake.” “Ah!” he reflected, “that was because you were a stranger. It's odd--they're all like that. I suppose it's because nobody really expects or believes in the unlooked-for thing, and yet that's the thing that always happens. And then, of course, that other affair, which really is serious, startled you the more.” She felt herself ridiculously and angrily blushing. “I don't know what you mean,” she said icily. “What other affair?” “Why, the well.” “The well?” she repeated vacantly. “Yes; the artesian well has stopped. Didn't the major tell you?” “No,” said the girl. “He was away; I haven't seen him yet.” “Well, the flow of water has ceased completely. That's what I'm here for. The major sent for me, and I've been to examine it.” “And is that stoppage so very important?” she said dubiously. It was his turn to look at her wonderingly. “If it's LOST entirely, it means ruin for the ranch,” he said sharply. He wheeled his horse, nodded gravely, and trotted off.