filled with puzzlement, knew that the solution lay only with the
girl beside him.

It had been his thought to point out the things which his practiced
mind suggested as of interest, but now, as he beheld the rapt
expression of her face, it all became different. Therefore he checked
the eager Caesar and let her lead the way.

Joan had no observation for anything as she rode on right up to the
very shadow of the suspended lake. Then, almost mechanically, as
though urged by some unseen hand, she drew up sharply. She was no
longer looking at the hill, she sat in her saddle limply, and stared
vacantly at the rough workings of the miners which had been abandoned
for the day.

Still Buck waited in silence.

At last he had his reward. The girl made a movement almostnow
that she had settled down with the adequate support of her "hired"
man.

Joan's graciousness to him was the one great delight of his every
waking hour. But he dreaded the moment when her manner might become
the mere tolerance she displayed toward Ike and Pete, and any of the
others who chose to make her farm a halting-place. So his visits had
become rarer; far rarer than made for his own peace of mind, for Joan
was always in his thoughts.

Tramping the long trail of the mountains her smiling eyes were always
somewhere ahead of him, encouraging him, and shedding a radiance of
hope and delight upon the dullest moments of his routine. Never for
one moment was the delightful picture of her presence absent from his
thoughts. And to him there was nothing in the whole wide