wise about some business that I ain’t what you could call up in.” He carried the saddle and bridle into the house, and she followed him. They found Lorena annoyed by the indisposition of her husband. “Dear me suz! Here’s your pa bed-fast again. He’s had a bad night and won’t open the door to let me tell him if he needs anything. He says he won’t even take spoon victuals, and he won’t get up, and his chest don’t hurt him so that ain’t it, and I never was any hand to be nattering around a body, but he hadn’t ought to go without his food like he does, when the Father himself has a tabernacle of flesh like you or me—though the Holy Ghost has not—and it’s probably mountain fever again, so I’ll make some composition tea and he’s just _got_ to take it. Of course I never had no revelations from the Lord and never did I claim to have, but you don’t need the Holy Ghost coming upon you to tell you the plain doings of common sense.” Whatever the nature of Mr. Follett’s business, his confidence in the soundness of his attitude toward it was perfect. He showed no sign of abstraction or anxiety; no sign of aught but a desire to live agreeably in the present,—a present that included Prudence. When the early breakfast was over they went out about the place, through the peach-orchard and the vineyard still dewy, lingering in the shade of a plum-tree, finding all matters to be of interest. For a time they watched and laughed at the two calves through the bars of the corral, cavorting feebly on stiffened legs while the bereaved mothers cast languishing glances at them from outside, conscious that their milk was being basely diverted from the rightful heirs. They picked many blossoms and talked of many things. There was no idle moment from early morning until high noon; and yet, though they were very busy, they achieved absolutely nothing. In the afternoon Prudence donned her own sombrero, and they went to the cañon to fish. From a clump of the yellowish green willows that fringed the stream, Follett cut a slender wand. To this he fixed a line and a tiny hook that he had carried in his hat, and for the rest of the distance to the cañon’s mouth he collected such grasshoppers as lingered too long in his shadow. Entering the cañon, they followed up the stream, clambering over broken rocks, skirting huge boulders, and turning aside to go around a gorge that narrowed the torrent and flung it down in a little cascade. Here and there Follett would flicker his hook over the surface of a shaded pool, poise it at the foot of a ripple, skim it across an eddy, cast it under a shelf of rock or dangle it in some promising nook by the willow roots, shielding himself meanwhile as best he could; here behind a boulder, there bending a willow in front of him, again lying flat on the bank, taking care to keep even his shadow off the stream and to go silently.