"You are a great deal of use to me," Leigh assured him. "Oh, anybody else could do all I do for you," he retorted. "But I wouldn't ask anybody else," the girl replied. "Not even my mother? She thinks there is no girl like you this side of heaven, or Virginia, anyhow, and she'd have taken it up with father," Thaine declared. "I thought of her," Leigh answered, "but in things like this, it is impossible. You said yourself that no man on Grass River would think it a wise plan. Your father won his fight out here, even his fight against the boom. We have a different wilderness to overcome, I guess. Mine is reclaiming that Cloverdale ranch from the Champers Company and the weeds. I don't know where your battlefield lies, but you'll have it, and it's because you haven't won yet that I can come to you. You have helped me and you always will." "I'm glad you came to me, anyhow," Thaine assured her. They sat awhile looking out at the prairies and the line of the river glistening in the gloaming. A faint pink tone edged some gray cloud flakes in the southwest sky and all the scene was restful in the soft evening light. At last Thaine said thoughtfully: "I haven't heard the bugle trumpet for my call to battle yet. Maybe I'll find out down at the University and make everybody proud of me some day as I am proud of you in your fight for a weed-covered quarter of prairie soil. Jo Bennington is always ridiculing country life, and yet she's pretty fond of Todd Stewart, who is more of a farmer every day." A little smile curved the corners of Leigh's mouth, and Thaine knew her thoughts. "You are not a bit alike, you two girls," he exclaimed. "Does it make any difference? There's only one of a kind of anything in this world, flower or fruit or leaf or life," Leigh added. "I found that out in painting. There's only one Jo, and one Pryor Gaines, and one Jane Aydelot as I remember her back in Ohio; one anything or anybody." "And only one Leigh in all the world." It was not the usual bantering tone now, and there was something in the expression of Thaine's handsome face; something looking out from his dark eyes that Leigh did not see, because she was looking out at the lights and shadows of evening. The sunset's afterglow had thrown a splendor far up the sky. In its reflected light, softened by twilight shadows, Leigh made a picture herself that an artist might love to paint. She turned away at his words, and a quiver of pain swept her face as Thaine leaned toward her eagerly. "Oh, Leigh, I wasn't joking. You are so unlike anybody else." He broke off suddenly. But Leigh was herself again and, smiling frankly, she added, "Let's count our blessings, then, and be thankful it's no worse." Thaine rose at once. "I must be going. It is after eight and I ought to be at Bennington's now. I am so glad, I am so honored, to have your confidence. Won't you keep telling me your plans, and if I can help you, will you let me do it?"