On a still, Sunday morning--that day which, when work does not press, is set apart in the range land for slight errands, attention to one's personal affairs, and to the pursuit of pleasure--Kent jogged placidly down the long hill into Cold Spring Coulee and pulled up at the familiar little unpainted house of rough boards, with its incongruously dainty curtains at the windows and its tiny yard, green and scrupulously clean. The cat with white spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their second clusters of leaves an inch above ground. She did not see Kent at first, and he sat quiet in the saddle, watching her with a flicker of amusement in his eyes; but in a moment she struck her finger and sprang up with a sharp little cry, throwing the rock from her. “Didn't you know that was going to happen, sooner or later?” Kent inquired, and so made known his presence. “Oh--how do you do?” She came smiling down to the gate, holding the hurt finger tightly clasped in the other hand. “How comes it you are riding this way? Our trail is all growing up to grass, so few ever travel it.” “We're all hard-working folks these days. Where's Man?” “Manley is down to the river, I think.” She rested both arms upon the gatepost and regarded him with her steady eyes. “If you can wait, he will be back soon. He only went to see if the river is fordable. He thinks two or three of our horses are on the other side, and he'd like to get them. The river has been too high, but it's lowering rather fast. Won't you come in?” She was pleasant, she was unusually friendly, but Kent felt vaguely that, somehow, she was different. He had not seen her for three months. Just after Christmas he had met her and Manley in town, when he was about to leave for a visit to his people in Nebraska. He had returned only a week or so before, and, if the truth were known, he was not displeased at the errand which brought him this way. He dismounted, and when she moved away from the gate he opened it and went in. “Well,” he began lightly, when he was seated upon the floor of the porch and she was back at her trellis, “and how's the world been using you? Had any more calamities while I've been gone?” She busied herself with tying together two pieces of string, so that the whole would reach to a certain nail driven higher than her head. She stood with both hands uplifted, and her face, and her eyes; she did not reply for so long that Kent began to wonder if she had heard him. There was no reason why he should watch her so intently, or why he should want to get up and push back the one lock of hair which seemed always in rebellion and always falling across her temple by itself.