"Oh, Virginia!" she cried to the girl in the riding-suit. "What do you think! I've got the very same brakeman! Doesn't that make the ending just perfect?" * * * * * Two hours later a boy and a girl on horseback forded Elk Creek, rode up the Valley, and to the summit of the highest foot-hill. "I'm glad we rode up here," said Virginia. "I'm missing them already, and to be up here with you helps a lot! Do you remember a year ago, Don? 'Twas in this very spot that we planned and planned, and the day was just like this, too--all clear and golden. It just seems as though every year is lovelier than the last, and this one has been the very loveliest of all my life." "I guess," said Donald thoughtfully, leaning forward in his saddle to pat MacDuff, "I guess it's been the best of my life, too, counting this summer and all. Last year at school was great, with college always ahead--sort of a dream almost true, you know. And then to have Jack and Carver here, and all the girls with you, finished everything up just right. But the best part of the year to me, Virginia," he finished hesitatingly, "was June when you came back, and I found you weren't a young lady after all. I was some glad, I tell you!" Virginia's gray eyes looked at the mountains, swept the golden prairie stretches, and lingered for a long moment on the cottonwoods which bordered Elk Creek before they came back to Donald's blue ones. "I'm glad, too," she said simply. Pedro and MacDuff sniffed the September air and gloried in it. They were impatient for a wild run across the brow of the hills, and wondered why their riders chose to look so long at the mountains on such an afternoon as this. If they sat so silently much longer, there would be no time to make the mesa, to gallop across its wide surface, and at last, perhaps, to have supper among the sagebrush with Robert Bruce. They felt somewhat encouraged when Virginia began to speak. "I've been trying to decide the very loveliest thing of all the year," she said. "I mean from September to June. I don't know whether 'twas the Vigilantes or Miss Wallace or Grandmother Webster, but I'm almost sure 'twas Grandmother Webster learning to love Father. The others were joys for me, but that was one for all of us. Of course we know the loveliest thing of this summer. Everything's been perfect, but Aunt Nan and Malcolm the most perfect of all. Yesterday, when Grandmother Webster's letter came, I just cried for joy, it was so lovely!