"Gethsemane," said the Dean to me once, when our talk had ranged wide and touched upon many things, "Gethsemane ain't no place; it's somethin' that happens. Whenever a man goes up against himself, right there is where Gethsemane is. And right there, too, is sure to be a fight. A man may not always know about it at the time; he may be too busy fightin' to understand just what it all means; but he'll know about it afterwards--No matter which side of him wins, he'll know afterwards that it was the one big fight of his life." CHAPTER XIV. AT MINT SPRING. When those days at Prescott were over, and Mr. and Mrs. Manning had left for their camp in Granite Basin, Kitty Reid returned to Williamson Valley reluctantly. She felt that with Phil definitely out of her life the last interest that bound her to the scenes of her girlhood was broken. Before many weeks the ranch would be sold. A Prescott agent had opened negotiations for an eastern client who would soon be out to look over the property; and Mr. Reid felt, from all that the agent had said, that the sale was assured. In the meantime Kitty would wait as patiently as she could. To help her, there would be Helen's visit, and there was her friendship with Professor Parkhill. It was not strange, considering all the circumstances, that the young woman should give her time more generously than ever to the only person in the neighborhood, except Patches, perhaps, who she felt could understand and appreciate her desires for that higher life of which even her own parents were ignorant. And the professor did understand her fully. He told her so many times each day. Had he not given all the years of his little life to the study of those refining and spiritualizing truths that are so far above the comprehension of the base and ignoble common herd? Indeed, he understood her language; he understood fully, why the sordid, brutal materialism of her crude and uncultured environment so repulsed and disgusted her. He understood, more fully than Kitty herself, in fact, and explained to her clearly, that her desires for the higher intellectual and spiritual life were born of her own rare gifts, and evidenced beyond all question the fineness and delicacy of her nature. He rejoiced with her--with a pure and holy joy--that she was so soon to be set free to live amid the surroundings that would afford her those opportunities for the higher development of her intellectual and spiritual powers which her soul craved. All this he told her from day to day; and then, one afternoon, he told her more. It was the same afternoon that Patches had so unexpectedly found Helen and Stanford in their Granite Basin camp. Kitty and the professor had driven in the buckboard to Simmons for the mail, and were coming back by the road to the Cross-Triangle, when the man asked, "Must we return to the ranch so soon? It is so delightful out here where there is no one to intrude with vulgar commonplaces, to mar our companionship."