Bennington found himself too weary to attempt an unknown, debris-covered road by dark.  He played cribbage with Old Mizzou and won.

About half past nine he pushed back his chair and went outside.  The stars had come out by the thousand, and a solitary cricket, which had in some way escaped the deluge, was chirping in the middle distance.  With a sudden uplift of the heart he realized that he would see “her” on the morrow.  He learned that no matter how philosophically we may have borne a separation, the prospect of its near end shows us how strong the repression has been; the lifting of the bonds makes evident how much they have galled.

CHAPTER X

THE WORLD MADE YOUNG

The morning fulfilled the promise of the night before.  Bennington de Laney awoke to a sun-bright world, fresh with the early breezes.  A multitude of birds outside the window bubbled and warbled and carolled away with all their little mights, either in joy at the return of peace, or in sorrow at the loss of their new-built houses.  Sorrow and joy sound much alike as nature tells them.  The farther ridges and the prairies were once more in view, but now, oh, wonder! the great plain had cast aside its robes of monk brown, and had stepped forth in jolly green-o’Lincoln.  The air was full of tingling life.  Altogether a morning to cry one to leap eagerly from bed, to rush to the window, to drink in deep draughts of electric balmy ozone, and to thank heaven for the grace of mere existence.

That at least is what Bennington did.  And he did more.  He despatched a hasty breakfast, and went forth and saddled his steed, and rode away down the gulch, with never a thought of sample tests, and never a care whether the day’s work were done or not.  For this was springtime, and the air was snapping with it.  Near the chickens’ shelter the burnished old gobbler spread his tail and dragged his wings and puffed his feathers and swelled himself red in the face, to the great admiration of a demure gray-brown little turkey hen.  Overhead wheeled two small hawks screaming.  They clashed, and light feathers came floating down from the encounter; yet presently they flew away together to a hole in a dead tree.  Three song sparrows dashed almost to his very feet, so busily fighting that they hardly escaped the pony’s hoofs.  Everywhere love songs trilled from the underbrush; and Bennington de Laney, as young, as full of life, as unmated as they, rode slowly along thinking of his lady love, and——­

“Hullo!  Where are you going?” cried she.

He looked up with eager joy, to find that they had met in the middle of what used to be the road.  The gulch had been swept bare by the flood, not only of every representative of the vegetable world, but also of the very earth in which it had grown.  From the remains of the roadbed projected sharp flints and rocks, among which the broncos picked their way.