Sometimes now, on warm afternoons, Lucy crept out and sat at the root of the pine where she had found her first place of refuge. There her dulled eyes began to note the beauties that surrounded her, the pines mounting in dark rows on the slopes, the blue distances where the cañon folded on itself, the glimpses of chaste, white summits far above against the blue. Her lungs breathed deep of the revivifying air, clean and untainted as the water in the little spring at her feet. The peace of it all entered her soul. Something in her forbade her to look back on the terrible past. A new life was here, and her youth rose up and whispered that it was not yet dead. During the period of her illness Moreau had begun to see both himself and the cabin through feminine eyes. Discrepancies revealed themselves. He wanted many things heretofore regarded as luxuries. From the tin cups of the table service to the towels made of ripped flour sacks, his domestic arrangements seemed mean and inadequate. They were all right for two prospectors, but not fitting for a woman and child. Lucy’s illness also revealed wants in her equipment that struck him as piteous. Her only boots were the ones he had seen her in on the morning after her arrival. She had no shawl or covering for cold weather. The baby’s clothes were a few torn pieces of calico and flannel. Moreau had washed these many times himself, doing them up in an old flour sack, which was attached to an aspen on the stream’s bank, and then placed in one of the deepest parts of the current. Here it remained for two days, the percolating water cleansing its contents as no washboard could. One evening, smoking under the pine, he acquainted Fletcher with a design he had been some days formulating. This was that Fletcher should ride into Hangtown the next day and not only replenish the commissariat, but buy all things needful for Lucy and the baby. Spotty was now also recovered, and, though hardly a mettlesome steed, was at least a useful pack horse. But the numerous list of articles suggested by Moreau would have weighted Spotty to the ground. So Fletcher was commissioned to buy a pack burro, and upon it to bring all needful food stuffs for the cabin and the habiliments for Lucy and the baby. “She’s got no shoes. You want to buy her some shoes, one useful pair and one fancy pair with heels.” “What size do I git? I ain’t never bought shoes for a woman before.” This was a poser, and both men cogitated till Moreau suggested leaving it to the shoe dealer, who should be told that Lucy was a woman of average size. “But her feet ain’t,” said Fletcher spitefully, never having been able to forgive Lucy her lack of beauty. “Never mind; you’ll have to make a bluff at it. Get the best you can. Then I want a shawl for her. It’ll be cold soon, and she’s got nothing to keep her warm.” “What kind of a shawl? I don’t know no more about shawls than I do about shoes.”