against her.

"I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was
at Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a
laugh.

"How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man
furtively.

"Why, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered brusquely,
and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.

In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the
windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays,
glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save
the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills
for the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the
vision of the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of
warmth and refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to
rest upon the wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South
over the hills, and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen
into winter quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite
beauty of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the
hills, the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw
a world in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone
bright on the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of
Abner's wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were
stricken or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains
of the mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their
own. Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not