“The saddest part of the story to me is, that your father, who loved her so, and worked so hard for his family, should have served you all the better by his death.” “Oh, don't say that, dear! Who knows what is best? But one thing we do know. The sorrow that cut my mother's life in two brought you and me together. It rent the stratum on which I was born and raised it to the level of yours, my lady!” “I shall not forget,” whispered Moya with blissful irony, “that you are the Poor Man's son!” VI AN APPEAL TO NATURE The autumn days were shortening imperceptibly and the sunsets had gained an almost articulate splendor: cloud calling unto cloud, the west horizon signaling to the east, and answering again, while the mute dark circle of hills sat like a council of chiefs with their blankets drawn over their heads. Soon those blankets would be white with snow. Behind the Post where the hills climb toward the Cottonwood Creek divide, there is a little canon which at sunset is especially inviting. It hastens twilight by at least an hour during midsummer, and in autumn it leads up a stairway of shadow to the great spectacle of the day--the day's departure from the hills. The canon has its companion rivulet always coming down to meet the stage-road going up. As this road is the only outlet hillward for all the life of the plain, and as the tendency of every valley population is to climb, one thinks of it as a way out rather than a way in. Higher up, the stage-road becomes a pass cut through a wall of splintered cliffs; and here it leads its companion, the brook, a wild dance over boulders, and under culverts of fallen rock. At last it emerges on what is called The Summit; and between are green, deep valleys where the little ranches, fields and fences and houses, seem to have slid down to the bottom and lie there at rest. A party of young riders from the post had gone up this road one evening, and two had come down, laughing and talking; but the other two remained in the circle of light that rested on the summit. Prom where they sat in the dry grass they could hear a hollow sound of moving feet as the cattle wandered down through folds of the hills, seeking the willow copses by the water. On the breast of her habit Moya wore the blossoms of the wild evening primrose, which in this region flowers till the coming of frost. They had been gathered for her on the way up, and as she had waited for them, sitting her horse in silence, the brown owls gurgled and hooted overhead from nest to nest in the crannies of the rocks. “You need not hold the horses,” she commanded, in her fresh voice. “Throw my bridle over your saddle pommel and yours over mine.--There!” she said, watching the horses as they shuffled about interlinked. “That is like half the marriages in this world. They don't separate and they don't go astray, but they don't _get_ anywhere!”