"It's been very interesting to me, I'm sure," she replied gravely. "I've learned so much. I wonder if, should I come this way again, I would find all this desert blossoming?" "I shouldn't be surprised; settlement's bound to follow a new railroad. But say, look into Hesperides Vale while you are at Wenatchee, and if my proposition seems good to you at one hundred dollars an acre, and that is what I'm paying, drop me a line. My name is Bailey. Henderson Bailey, Post-Office, Wenatchee, after the end of the month." He waited with expectation in his frank brown eyes, but the girl stood obliviously watching Tisdale. He reached the platform and stopped, breathing deep and full, while he shook the dust from his hat. "I am sorry, madam," he said, "but their only saddle-horse pulled his rope-stake this morning and went off with the wild herd. You will have to take this freight back to Kittitas." "How disappointing!" she exclaimed. "And you were forced to tramp back directly through this heat and dust." "This is the lightest soil I ever stepped on"--he glanced down over his powdered leggings and shoes; the humor broke gently in his face--"and there's just one kind deeper,--the Alaska tundra." With this he hurried by her to the office. Presently the freight whistled the siding, and Bailey picked up the baggage and went down to make arrangements with the trainmen. The girl followed, and when Tisdale came back, she stood framed in the doorway of the waiting caboose, while a brakeman dusted a chair, which he placed adroitly facing outside, so that she might forget the unmade bunks and greasy stove. "It isn't much on accommodations," he said conciliatingly, "but you can have it all to yourselves; as far as you go, it's your private car." The other train thundered into the station and past; the freight began to move, and Tisdale swung himself aboard. Then the station master, remembering the apples at the last moment, ran with the basket, crowned still by the Rome Beauty for which he had refused five dollars, and dropped it as a parting tribute at her feet. "Thank you! Thank you for everything!" Her soft voice fluted back to Bailey, and she leaned forward a little, raising her hand with a parting salute. "Good-by!"