confidence to strangers, still she had liked the little Eastern girl.

These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts hither
and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to
collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She
had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day that she kept
post-office.

In a few minutes more the group in the post-office began to disperse under
the skilful manipulation of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps with
an air of "God speed you," and they were soon but dwindling specks on the
horizon. To others she implied such friendly farewells that there was
nothing to do but betake themselves to their saddles. Others had
compromised with the saloon opposite, and their roaring mirth came in
snatches of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up the little pile
of letters that had remained uncalled for with what seemed a deliberate
slowness. Each time any one entered the room she looked up—then the hope
died hard in her face. Leander came in with catlike tread and removed the
pigeon-holes from the table. The post-office was closed. Family life had
been resumed at the Daxes’.

Judith left the room and stood in the blinding sunlight, basking in it as
if she were cold. The mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and she
was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient spirits of the morning.
Her head was sunk on her breast and she held her hands with locked fingers
behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching
furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to
horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner
of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last
wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing