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He was very red when he told me that Miss
Buchanan liked--apples. Apples at that time did not grow in the brush-
hills. Tom had bought them at the village store.
* * * * *
But Alethea-Belle grew thinner and whiter.
Just before the end of the term the climax came. I happened to find
the little schoolmarm crying bitterly in a clump of sage-brush near
the water-troughs.
"It's like this," she confessed presently: "I can't rid myself of that
weak, hateful Belle. She's going to lie down soon, and let the boys
trample on her; then she'll have to quit. And Alethea sees the
Promised Land. Oh, oh! I do despise the worst half of myself!"
"The sooner you leave these young devils the better."
"What do you say?"
She confronted me with flashing eyes. I swear that she looked
beautiful. The angularities, the lack of colour, the thin chest, the
stooping back were effaced. I could not see them, because--well,
because I was looking through them, far beyond them, at something
else.
"I love my boys, my foothill boys; and if they are rough, brutal at
times, they're strong.


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