that she could not keep her weary eyelids from falling.  There were drowsier spells in which she lost a feeling of where she was, and these were disturbed by the jolt of wheels over a rough place.  Then came a blank interval, short or long, which ended in a more violent lurch of the buckboard.  Madeline awoke to find her head on Florence’s shoulder.  She sat up laughing and apologizing for her laziness.  Florence assured her they would soon reach the ranch.

Madeline observed then that the horses were once more trotting.  The wind was colder, the night darker, the foot-hills flatter.  And the sky was now a wonderful deep velvet-blue blazing with millions of stars.  Some of them were magnificent.  How strangely white and alive!  Again Madeline felt the insistence of familiar yet baffling associations.  These white stars called strangely to her or haunted her.

V The Round-Up

It was a crackling and roaring of fire that awakened Madeline next morning, and the first thing she saw was a huge stone fireplace in which lay a bundle of blazing sticks.  Some one had kindled a fire while she slept.  For a moment the curious sensation of being lost returned to her.  She just dimly remembered reaching the ranch and being taken into a huge house and a huge, dimly lighted room.  And it seemed to her that she had gone to sleep at once, and had awakened without remembering how she had gotten to bed.

But she was wide awake in an instant.  The bed stood near one end of an enormous chamber.  The adobe walls resembled a hall in an ancient feudal castle, stone-floored, stone-walled, with great darkened rafters running across the ceiling.  The few articles of furniture were worn out and sadly dilapidated.  Light flooded into the room from two windows on the right of the fireplace and two on the left, and another large window near the bedstead.  Looking out from where she lay, Madeline saw a dark, slow up-sweep of mountain.  Her eyes returned to the cheery, snapping fire, and she watched it while gathering courage to get up.  The room was cold.  When she did slip her bare feet out upon the stone floor she very quickly put them back under the warm blankets.  And she was still in bed trying to pluck up her courage when, with a knock on the door and a cheerful greeting, Florence entered, carrying steaming hot water.

“Good mawnin’, Miss Hammond.  Hope you slept well.  You sure were tired last night.  I imagine you’ll find this old rancho house as cold as a barn.  It’ll warm up directly.  Al’s gone with the boys and Bill.  We’re to ride down on the range after a while when your baggage comes.”

Florence wore a woolen blouse with a scarf round her neck, a short corduroy divided skirt, and boots; and while she talked she energetically heaped up the burning wood in the fireplace, and laid Madeline’s clothes at the foot of the bed, and heated a rug and put that on the floor by the bedside.  And lastly, with a sweet, direct smile, she said: