But there were other influences at work, and one of these made its presence felt speedily. After the funeral he was sitting alone in the room which he had converted into a library. His unseeing eyes were fixed on the smiling landscape into which irrigation had converted the once arid ranch. A troop of brood mares, with foals at heel, were emulating mankind by neglecting the lush pastures at their feet and craning their graceful necks over a palisade to nibble the thorn hedge it protected. This double barrier shut off the lawn and garden from the meadow lands. Here and there the green of apple orchards, planted with artistic regard to open vistas, was already flecked with golden fruit. Soon the reapers would be busy on the sections where maize and oats and wheat were ripening. The lowing of cattle announced that milking-time was near; for, among her other activities, Mrs. Power had established a model dairy, and it was her gentle boast that she had made it pay; thus bringing out in the mother the money-coining instincts which the son had developed so unexpectedly. Such a scene might well lull the beholder to rest; but Power was blind to its charms. He was reviewing, in an aimless way, the associations which that very apartment held for him. Changed though it was out of all semblance to the poverty-stricken living-room of the ranch, Nancy's spirit had never been wholly exorcised. He pictured her slim and lissome figure as she had stood with him at the window many an evening, and watched the purple shadows stealing over the hills. In that room she had married Marten. From a bamboo stand near one of the windows she had taken the spray of white heather which formed her wedding bouquet. Why had she never mentioned it to him? Or were the last five weeks nothing but some disordered vision of the imagination, a delusion akin to those glimpses of palm-laden oases and flashing waters which come to thirst-maddened wanderers in deserts? But another shadow intervened. His mother, in turn, had loved the gorgeous sunsets of Colorado; she, too, was wont to gaze at the far-flung panorama which once delighted Nancy's eyes. And she, alas! had become a dream which would never again wake into reality. At that moment the relief of tears was imminent--and tears are intolerable to a strong man. He sprang upright in a spasm of pain, and bitter words escaped him brokenly. The movement, no less than the few disconnected sentences, seemed to arouse Jake, who happened to be lounging against one of the pillars of the veranda--out of sight, perhaps, but certainly not out of hearing. "Would yer keer ter hev an easy stroll around, Mistah Power?" he said instantly. "No, thanks--why are you waiting there? Do you want to speak to me?" This questioning might bear interpretation as the outburst of one who resented the overseer's presence; but Jake was ready with the soft answer which turneth away wrath: