in front of the door of the blacksmith's shop. She was wrapped in a dark
blue cloak, with the hood drawn over her head; the cool dampness had given
to her cheeks a clear, pure glow, and her brown eyes looked out with a
cheerful light. She was watching the parting of the mist in the valley
below; for a wind had sprung up, and now the rift widened, as the windows
of heaven might have opened, giving a glimpse of the world to the "Blessed
Damozel." All was dark above and around her; only a single shaft of
sunlight pierced the fog, and startled into life a hundred tints of
brightness in the valley. She caught the sparkle on the roofs and windows
of the town ten miles away; the fields of sunburnt stubble glowed a deep
Indian red; the young crops were tenderest emerald; and the line of the
distant bay, a steel-blue thread against the horizon.

Arnold was plodding up the lower trail on his gray mare, fetlock deep in
mud. He dismounted at the door of the shop, and called to him a small
Mexican lad with a cheek of the tint of ripe corn.

"Here, Pedro Segundo! Take this mare up to the camp! Can you catch?" He
tossed him a coin. "Bueno!"

"Mucho bueno!" said Pedro the First, looking on approvingly from the door
of his shop.

Arnold turned to the schoolmistress, who was smiling from her perch on a
pile of wet logs.

"I'm perfectly happy!" she said. "This east wind takes me home. I hear the
bluebirds, and smell the salt-marshes and the wood-mosses. I'm not sure but
that when the fog lifts we shall see white caps in the valley."