With a strange little dignity, he drew himself up and held out his hand to the doctor, saying, "I'm awful glad she likes you." The voice trembled, the lips were uncertain, a lump hurt in his throat. Donnie was afraid that he was going to cry. He was too big to cry now--his shoulders squared. Quickly, he turned and left the room. The man and woman watched the pathetic little figure, with drooping head, pass the window. "He will understand soon that I am not going to take you away from him," Powell's voice was gentle, "but I know how it hurts at first." Drawing some letters from his pocket, he seated himself beside Katherine on the couch. "These are from the children and the matron who will travel with them and help care for them at the Springs," he explained. Together they read misspelled words scrawled in crude characters. One child wanted to know if he could have a real, live chicken; another asked nothing but a chance to see trees and places where 'the cops don't make you keep off;' a third begged permission to bring his cat, Nigger, "becoz Nigger ain't got no one to luv him but me--becoz he has got a crooked tail and one eye's gone, but I luv him and he luvs me and he'll be lonesome after I go way." Katherine remembered the dog that had been her sole companion so many hours--the dog that Limber had buried in a little grave at the Circle Cross. "Of course, Nigger is coming?" she laughed with a catch in her voice. "A special invitation has already gone for him, and the matron is authorized to buy a basket for Nigger's comfort;" was the answer. Katherine was silent for a moment, and Powell leaned toward her. His hand lifted her face gently, "Sweetheart, what are your thoughts?" Her eyes were dim and her voice trembled, "'And a Knight shall come that shall have a head of gold, the look of a lion, a heart of steel, conditions without weakness, the valour of a man, and faith and belief in God. And he shall be the best Knight in the world.'" Powell's arms slipped about her and he drew her close. "May I prove worthy to be your Knight for all the days of my life, dear Lady of the Pool!" CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Only the Galiuros knew that a pinto pony had trodden unbroken trails through the night, until it reached a spot where the tangled growth of brush thinned and ended on a high ledge overlooking the undulating flat of the Sulphur Springs range. The mysterious beauty of coming dawn merged with dying starlight, where faint shadows outlined the rugged peaks of the Grahams across the broad Valley. Above them all Mt. Graham lifted its glorious, snow-capped head. Unconquered, unscathed by the storms of centuries past, it gazed steadfastly at the sky above it, while the world slept at its feet.