to remain longer in what she called "_le plus triste pays du monde_." If the truth could have been known, Millicent would have signed away ten years of her life to have gone back with the woman to the Old World, the only home she had ever known. Graham had not been mistaken when he predicted to Millicent that she would grow more in sympathy with the race from which she drew her inheritance of character and temperament than at first seemed possible. Nature is stronger than habit, well called second nature; and as the surface roughness became familiar to her, she began to feel the strong life and vigor of the young Western land quickening her pulses and stimulating her whole being. The poverty of intellectual intercourse was more than compensated by the tremendous power of work, the electrical force which accomplishes so rapidly in this new land what in other countries has been the slow growth of centuries. An answering glow of enthusiasm flushed her with hope, with a keener, fuller, more intense life than she had ever known before. She had clung at first to her traditions, and fought against the tide which seemed to be sweeping this people on and on and ever on. But nature was too strong for habit; her upright, fearless mind acknowledged kinship with these hard-working men and women, to whom pleasure is not save in toil, whose whole life is one long unconscious sacrifice to their country. On the eastern margins of our land the austere simplicity and purity have become infested with plague-spots brought--ay, imported with care and expense--from the Old World, and fostered like exotics on the clean soil. But from the great Western prairie comes a fresh, strong breeze which sweetens all the foulness of the Atlantic cities, and makes the breath of Columbia still pure and fragrant. With this new sentiment for her new-found country came the first passionate love to the heart of the beautiful and unhappy young woman. She had breathed the spicy air of the Californian forests, bracing and sweet, and her cheek had grown fuller and fairer in the perfect climate. Her empty, hollow heart was filled by a great love and strength, all-sustaining and soothing.