Yes, Judith was waiting for him. She was there in the living-room, curled up on a great couch, lifting her eyes expectantly as his step sounded on the veranda. A wonderfully gowned, transcendently lovely Judith; a Judith of bare white arms, round and warm and rich in their tender curves; a Judith softly, alluringly feminine even in the eyes of Bud Lee, no longer theorist; a Judith whose filmy gown clung lingeringly to her like a sun-shot mist, a Judith whose tender mouth was a red flower, whose eyes were Aphrodite's own, glorious, dawn-gray, soft with the light shining in them, the unhidden light of love for the man who came toward her swiftly; the Judith he had first held in his arms and kissed. He came in quickly, his heart singing. The color suddenly ran up hot and vivid in the girl's cheeks. Standing over her he put out his hand. But she slipped her own hands behind her. "Good evening, Mr. Lee," said Judith brightly. "Really, you have taken your time in making your first call. Won't you sit down?" "No," said Bud Lee gravely. "I'll take mine standing, please!" "Like a man to be shot at dawn?" cried Judith. "Dear me, Mr. Lee, that sounds so tragic. What, pray, are you taking?" "A new job," said Lee. "I've come to tell you that just being horse foreman doesn't suit me any longer. What you need and need right away is a general manager. That's what I want to be, your general manager, Judith. For life!" Judith laughed softly, happily. Her hands flew out to him like two little homing birds, and she followed them--home. "You'll find your work cut out for you, Mr. Lee," she told him. [Illustration: "You'll find your work cut out for you."] "It's the kind of work I want," answered Bud Lee. Then suddenly her arms went about his neck and tears sprang into her eyes and she set her lips to the cut he had sought to cover with his hair, and took his sore, swathed hand tenderly into her own two hands, laying it against her cheek. "Carson telephoned me," she whispered, her lips trembling all of a sudden. "He told me how Trevors fought . . . and how you fought! And he was half crying over the telephone, he was so proud of you. And I am proud of you! And--oh, Bud Lee, Bud Lee, I love you so!" From without came the sound of the Blue Lake boys returning, Carson at their head. Riding close together they were singing, their voices floating through the night in an old cowboy song. Mrs. Simpson heard and ran out into the courtyard to listen. Marcia and Pollock Hampton, lost to all save each other in the shadows far down the veranda, listened, and Marcia clapped her hands. The voices were to be heard from afar, the strong voices of a score of men. The strange thing is that neither Judith nor Bud Lee heard; that neither had the vaguest consciousness just then that there were in all the world any other, mortals than--Judith and Bud Lee.