“Oh, William,” said Virginia. “You’d like William; and I’m sure you wouldn’t call him ‘Bill’ like some do. It makes such a difference to him! If you call him ‘Bill’ most of the time, he’s just Bill, and it’s a lot easier for him to stay around the saloon. But if you say ‘William,’ it makes it easier for him to keep away—he told me so one day. And in his spare time, he loves to take care of flowers, and plant vines and trees.” The Colonel liked William. Indeed, he liked him so thoroughly that he asked question after question concerning him; and then about Alec and Joe and Dick. It was amazing how the time flew! Another hour passed before either of them imagined it. The country was changing. Already it was becoming more open, less mountainous. Some peaks towered in the distance—blue and hazy and snow-covered. “We can see those from home,” Virginia told the Colonel. “They’re the highest in all the country round. They’re the last landmark of home I’ll see, I suppose,” she finished wistfully, and was sorry when a bend of the road hid them from sight. “You love the mountains?” he said, half-questioning. “Oh, yes,” she cried, “better than anything!” And then they talked of the mountains, and of how different they were at different times, like persons with joys and disappointments and ideals. How on some days they seemed silent and reserved and solemn, and on others sunny and joyous and almost friendly; and how at night one somehow felt better acquainted with them than in the day-time. “But the foot-hills are always friendly,” Virginia told him. “And they’re really more like people, because you can get acquainted with them more easily. The mountains, after all, seem more like God. Don’t you think so?” The Colonel did think so, most decidedly, now that he thought at all about it. He admitted to himself that perhaps in his long journeys across the mountains and through the foot-hills on his visits West, he had not thought much about them, especially as related to himself. He wished he had had this gray-eyed girl with him for she breathed the very spirit of the country. It had been rare good fortune for him that by chance he was standing on the platform when she said “Good-by” to her father, else he had missed much. It was dinner time before either of them realized how quickly the morning had passed; and Virginia ran to wash her hands, after the Colonel had raised his cap with a soldierly bow, saying that he hoped to see her again in the afternoon. He did see her again in the afternoon, for they discovered that their sections were in the same car, in fact, directly opposite; and again the next morning, until by the time they reached Omaha they were old friends. They talked more about the country, which, after leaving the mountains, was new to Virginia’s interested eyes; and then about books; and after that about the war, the old soldier telling a most flattering listener story after story of his experiences.