Time sped swiftly beneath the cottonwoods. To the boy and girl in the morning glow of love hours are minutes. They did not know they had so many things to talk over. Every subject was colored with a new light and had a new relationship. But love itself was uppermost, on their lips and in their hearts. Justin bore away from that arbor seat a conflicting sense of exaltation and unworthiness. The warm inner light that illumined him flowed out upon the world and brightened it. He walked with a sense of buoyancy. There was a tang in the air and a glow in the sky before unknown. Meeting Ben Davison he had a new sense of comradeship with him; and though Ben talked of the young English setter he had recently purchased, and sought to show off the good points of the dog, Justin was thinking of Ben himself, who was a cousin to Lucy, and now shared in some degree her superior merits. Also, when Philip Davison came out of the ranch house and walked toward the horse corrals, the glance of his blue eyes seemed brighter and kindlier, his manner more urbane and noble, and the simple order he gave to Ben concerning work to be done fell in kindlier tone. Though Davison’s words bit like acid sometimes, Justin was resolved now to remember always that he was Lucy’s uncle and guardian. Walking homeward, Justin looked now and then at the ranch house. He had seen Lucy flutter into it like a bird; she was in that house now, he reflected, brightening it with her presence. The house, the grounds, and more than all the cottonwood grove, became sacred. CHAPTER VII WILLIAM SANDERS The feeling which hallowed the mere local surroundings of love held its place tenaciously in Justin’s heart and seemed not likely to pass away. It was no sickly sentimentality, but had the power to strengthen his inner life and add to his growing manliness. Justin was employed on the ranch now, and though there were many distasteful things connected with the work, he desired to remain, because it gave him so many opportunities to be near Lucy Davison. The necessary cruelties connected with the rearing and handling of cattle on a great range sickened him at times; for a love that was almost a worship of all life, the lower forms equally with the higher, had been instilled by Clayton into every fibre of his being. To Justin now even the elements seemed to stir with consciousness. Did not certain chemicals exhibited by Clayton rush together into precipitates and crystals, as if they loved and longed to be united, and did not so common a thing as fire throw out tentacles of flame, and grapple with the wood as if hungry? And who was to say that the precipitates and crystals and the fire did not know? Certainly not ignorant man. With this love of every form of life there grew a manly gentleness, broken strangely at times by outbursts of temper, so that often it seemed whimsical.