"Maybe I shall know them as well as I do you some day, Bruno," she said gravely to him. "But I shall never like them as well. That wouldn't be possible: they're strangers." The dog nuzzled his head into her hand and marched steadily beside her. Then she took Neckart and Bruno over a little hill to a spring-house, into which you went through a mossy door across a sparkling little brook. She went inside and brought out a bowl of yellow cream, all of them watching the kitchen windows guiltily as she did it; and then they went on aimlessly across the stepping-stones in the brook up through the field of young corn until they skirted the brush hedge again, when Bruno left them in pursuit of ground-squirrels. There was a bank running along the river-shore, topped with nodding ferns and purple iron-weed, and brown with the soft, feathery tops of the mouse-ear. The bank was on one side, the water on the other, swift, dark, mobile, throwing back now a still belt of sunshine, now gloomy woods, now the yellow shadows of low-driven clouds. They walked with the river, not against it. The wind blew damp in their faces. Since Neckart had talked so confidently of her father's improvement, Jane had been gay and light-hearted as a child, with a nervous quaver now and then in her voice as if a word would bring the tears. She looked at him thoughtfully as they walked on. "You ought to go to California again," she said abruptly. "I can take tonics at home, if you mean that I need them." "Yes. You are more worn and haggard than when we left Omaha. Every day of the journey I used to see how the wrinkles left your forehead, and your eye cleared and your voice changed. It was the mountain-air. There is no tonic for you like the mountain-air." Neckart shifted his hat uneasily, and turned to look at the river as though the frank blue eyes anxiously inspecting his face hurt him. "I was harassed and perplexed then as to the policy which I should adopt for the paper in a certain political question. My grim looks were no doubt owing to that. You decided the question for me." "I? Why, I know nothing of politics." "No. But the choice offered me was between right and financial ruin on one side, and a fortune and neutrality on the other. It would be impossible," in a tone which suddenly became careless and matter of fact, "for any man to come in contact with a nature as absolutely honest as yours, Miss Swendon, and not be influenced by it. I do not think I spoke to you at all of this question, yet it seemed to me that you dictated every step of my course. I never have told you of my affairs since, yet every day I take your advice on them. It is always different from that of my political friends, because it is simply the broad truth and common sense. I follow it." He turned to her with one of his rare smiles and an odd break in his controlled voice. "I hold your hand in mine every step of my way."