Not without regret, nor certain light allusions to the state other feelings, did Janet part company with the shack and the now familiar prairie. The shack had been a house to her, and one whose roof and walls had held her in the very closest relations; and besides, though she did not say a word about this, it was the only residence she had ever met which she could possibly imagine herself saving up enough money to buy. This was one of its secrets. Steve, taking a route of his own, drove twice through the waters of the wandering Comanche. At these wide shallows, Janet's gossip ceased while she held to his coat-sleeve and kept her eye on the water as it hurried through the spokes and rose steadily to the hub. But when the stout pony pulled them up the opposite bank and the road lay before them the same length as before, she again took up the thread of the conversation. As everybody knows, a conversation can lead almost anywhere; the talk will get to wherever it is going by some route as long as words point the way, and always the story of one's _self_ will leak through the sentences in the end. And where is there anything so conducive to the objects of conversation as a Rockaway buggy wheeling it over the cushioned sward and the flowers trooping by? We are not going to intrude upon their pleasant situation; suffice it to say that as time passed he became more and more Steve Brown and she became increasingly Janet. It was about the middle of the forenoon when they reached Belleville, the prairie highway becoming now a shady homestead street, with Southern cottages ensconced in vines and shrubbery and sheltered by prosperous trees. Presently they turned into a street of stores which delivered them finally to a hitching-rack at the end of a walk leading up to the steps of the court-house. The Professor, it devolved upon inquiry, was busy just at present, but if the young lady would step up to his room he would give her an examination shortly. Steve, being thus left to himself, went outside again. At the side of the gravel walk was a green bench presided over by a china-berry tree; he sat down here and waited. Occasionally a passer-by diversified the tenor of his waiting--now a straight-paced lawyer garbed in black and thinking dark thoughts; again, a leisurely stockman arrayed like himself with sombrero and spurs. His own spurs he had not thought to remove since he got back that morning. The little town, like other county capitals, had an atmosphere that was half the hush of the court-room and partly the quiet of academic groves, in which state of being the inhabitants were peacefully and permanently established, the court-house being, in truth, Belleville's principal industry.