“Maw,” began Orlando, “the reason you don’t get no bird-house built out hyear is that they ain’t no birds.  We have offered time and time again to build you a house fo’ buzzuds, they bein’ the only birds hyearabouts, but you ‘low that you ain’t fav’ble to tamin’ ’em.”

“I wuz raised in Tennessee, an’ we-uns had a house for martins made out’n gourds, an’ it was pearty.”  The pride with which she repeated this particular claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with repetition.  As she advanced further through the dim perspective of years, the little mountain town in Tennessee became more and more the centre of cultivation and civic importance.  The desolate cabin that she had left for the interminable journey westward was recalled flatteringly through the hallowing mists of time.  The children, by reason of these chronicles, had grown to regard their mother as a sort of princess in exile.

“Mrs. Rodney”—­Swift leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear.  She regarded him tentatively, then grinned.  At her time of life, why should she put faith in the promises of men?  “You fix it up, an’ you get your bird-house,” was the conclusion of his sentence.

While this discussion had been in progress the viands had not been neglected except by such members of the company as had been bereft of appetite by loftier emotions—­in consequence of which the table appeared to have sustained a visitation of seventeen-year locusts.  Eudora, ever economic in the value she placed not only upon herself but her environment, proposed to her guests that they should wash the dishes, an art in which they were by no means deficient, being no exception to the majority of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits.  And thus it came to pass that Eudora’s suitors, swathed in aprons, meekly washed dishes shoulder to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance of valorous deeds.

As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or send for her.  After supper, Chugg, with fresh horses to the stage, left Rodney’s, apparently for some port in that seemingly pathless sea of foot-hills.  That there should be trails and defined routes over this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more wonderful to Mary than the charted high-roads of the Atlantic.  The foot-hills seemed to have grown during the long journey till they were foot-hills no longer; they had come to be the smaller peaks of the towering range that had formed the spine of the desert.  The air, that seemed to have lost some of its crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean hill country.  It stirred the pulses like some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had been mellowing for centuries.

Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the great company of mountains.  A brooding desolation had settled on it at close of day, and all the laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing voices of the young folk could not dispel the feeling of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black waters of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the stranger within their gate.