As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh horses to the stage, left Rodney’s, apparently for some port in that seemingly pathless sea of foot-hills. That there should be trails and defined routes over this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more wonderful to Mary than the charted high-roads of the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have grown during the long journey till they were foot-hills no longer; they had come to be the smaller peaks of the towering range that had formed the spine of the desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of its crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean hill country. It stirred the pulses like some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had been mellowing for centuries. Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the great company of mountains. A brooding desolation had settled on it at close of day, and all the laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing voices of the young folk could not dispel the feeling of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black waters of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the stranger within their gate. Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet after the evening meal, settling herself in the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of conveyance. Her family, who might have told the hour of day or her passing mood by the action of the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night. The snuff-brush, newly replenished from the tin box, kept perfect time to the motion of the chair. With the lady of the house it was one of the brief seasons of passing content vouchsafed by an ample meal and a good digestion. Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall and began to clean it. His hands had the fumbling, indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry with the gun was of a part with the impotent dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for the rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and, having found them, he would forget the reason of his quest. Not once that evening had they rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora’s suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent intelligence was a revival of his wife’s plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house. That, and a certain furtive anxiety during supper lest his daughter Eudora should forget to keep his plate piled high, were the only signs of a participation in the life about him.