thousand eight hundred, at last above five thousand; and still there seemed about them nothing but a vast expanse of flat levels,—­the table-lands of Nebraska.  There was little that was beautiful in the landscape, which was principally made up of wide reaches of sand, dotted with cactus and grease-wood and with the droll cone-shaped burrows of the prairie-dogs, who could be seen gravely sitting on the roofs of their houses, or turning sudden somersaults in at the holes on top as the train whizzed by.  They passed and repassed long links of a broad shallow river which the maps showed to be the Platte, and which seemed to be made of two-thirds sand to one-third water.  Now and again mounted horsemen appeared in the distance whom Mr. Dayton said were “cow-boys;” but no cows were visible, and the rapidly moving figures were neither as picturesque nor as formidable as they had expected them to be.

Flowers were still abundant, and their splendid masses gave the charm of color to the rather arid landscape.  Soon after noon dim blue outlines came into view, which grew rapidly bolder and more distinct, and revealed themselves as the Rocky Mountains,—­the “backbone of the American Continent,” of which we have all heard so much in geographies and the newspapers.  It was delightful, in spite of dust and glare, to sit with that sweep of magnificent air rushing into their lungs, and watch the great ranges grow and grow and deepen in hue, till they seemed close at hand.  To Katy they were like enchanted land.  Somewhere on the other side of them, on the dim Pacific coast, her husband was waiting for her to come, and the wheels seemed to revolve with a regular rhythmic beat to the cadence of the old Scotch song,—­

    “And will I see his face again;
     And will I hear him speak?”

But to Clover the wheels sang something less jubilant, and she studied the mountains on her little travelling-map, and measured their distance from Burnet with a sigh.  They were the walls of what seemed to her a sort of prison, as she realized that presently she should be left alone among them, Katy and Polly gone, and these new friends whom she had learned to like so much,—­left alone with Phil and, what was worse, with Mrs. Watson!  There was a comic side to the latter situation, undoubtedly, but at the moment she could not enjoy it.

Katy carried out her intention.  She made a long call on Mrs. Watson in her section, and listened patiently to her bemoanings over the noise of the car which had kept her from sleeping; the “lady in gray over there” who had taken such a long time to dress in the morning that she—­Mrs. Watson—­could not get into the toilet-room at the precise moment that she wished; the newspaper boy who would not let her “just glance over” the Denver “Republican” unless she bought and paid for it ("and I only wanted to see the Washington news, my dear, and something about a tin wedding in East Dedham.  My mother came from there, and I recognized one of the names