Before

see them through half the day. Lieber left, the horses were herded once more, and with much trouble driven out upon the desert. Lieber turned to Gerry.

"Don't let them back in until to-morrow, please," he said. "If you do, they'll founder."

"What about the cattle?" asked Gerry. "The cattle are all right. They have n't enough spirit left to kill themselves eating. They'll begin lying down pretty soon. Good-by, and remember, you'll get a warm welcome up at Lieber's when ever you feel like riding over."

"Thanks," said Gerry. "Good-by." He watched Lieber ride away on the road the priest had taken. Fazenda Flores, his isolated refuge, was beginning to link itself to a world. Man, like a vine, has tendrils. To climb he must reach them out and cling.

CHAPTER XXI

THE horses picked up rapidly, the cattle more slowly. Two calves, added to the herd over night, aroused memories of the home farm in Gerry's breast. Every morning he stood by the pasture fence and gazed with a thrill on the new life in the scene. A fluttering corn-husk or the wave of a hand was enough to start the horses careering over the fields. Life had sprung up in them anew. They played at being afraid. They leaped mere hummocks as though they were walls. Heads and tails held high, they breasted the morning breeze in a vigorous, resounding trot. The cattle-all but a few that still hovered between life and death-now stood sturdily on four legs. They lifted their heads slowly, and gazed mild-eyed at the romping horses.

The reward of those long months of preparation was at hand. Once every spade thrust had seemed only the precursor to barren effort. Now every stroke of the hoe seemed to bring forth a fresh green leaf. Life fell into an entrancing monotone. It became an endless chain that forged its own links and lengthened out into an endless perspective. Days passed. The arrival of Lieber's foreman to see how the stock was progressing was an event. He brought with him an old saddle and bridle, a gift from Lieber to Gerry.

The foreman's eyes caught on the two

new-born calves. They had been taken from their weak mothers and were in a rough pen by themselves. The foreman did not have to count the stock to see that none was missing. He was cattle bred. A gap in the herd or the bunch of horses would have flown at the seventh sense of the stockman the moment he laid eyes on the field. Instead, there were these two calves.

"Master," he said to Gerry, "you have made up your mind not to lose a head. You would save even these little ones, born before their time!"

Gerry nodded gravely. In trouble and valuable time they had cost him an acre of cotton. But an acre of cotton was a small price to pay for life. A grip of the hand, and the foreman was off in a cloud of dust. At the bridge he pulled his horse down to the shambling fox-trot that spares. beast and man, but eats steadily into a long journey.

Gerry turned to his work, but a cry from the house arrested him. He listened. The cry was followed by a moan. He dropped his field tools and ran to the house. All was commotion. The day of days had come to Margarita with the appalling suddenness of an event too long expected. She called for Gerry. He went to her. She looked a mere child in the big rough bed he had made with his own hands. Suffering had struck the light from her face. She was frightened, and clung to him.

Joana, the old negress, and Dona Maria made methodical haste about the room. At the second cry from Margarita, Gerry lost his head. These women were hard, they were iron. They paid no attention.

"Something must be done! Something must be done!" he said aloud in English. The aunt and the negress worked on in silent preparation of the preparations of many days. Margarita screamed. They paid no heed. Her frenzied grip bit into Gerry's hand.

"We must have a doctor!" he shouted in their own tongue to the women. "Do you hear? you hear? We must have a doctor!" Cold sweat was gathering on his brow. He too was frightened.

Dona Maria glanced at him.

"A doctor?" she cried impatiently. "What for? The girl is not ill."

"Not ill! Not ill!" roared Gerry.

Dona Maria picked up two towels and tied them to the bed's head. She tore Margarita's hands from Gerry's; then she twisted the towels into ropes and gripped the girl's hands on them.

"Hold on to those," she commanded. "Towels have some sense." Then she clawed Gerry out of his seat by the bed and hustled him out of the room, out of the house. The door slammed behind him. He heard the great bar drop. He was locked out.

Gerry paced angrily up and down the veranda. Calm came back to him. He saw that he had been a fool. He stopped, and sat down on the steps of the veranda. Here, before he had made his benches, she had often sat beside him, caressed him, sung to him. How cold he had been! How little he had done for her, and now she was doing this for him! He remembered that as she had worked on baby clothes she had said she wished she had some blue ribbon. They had all laughed at her, but she had nodded her girl's head gravely and said:

"Yes, I wish I had some blue ribbona little roll of blue ribbon." What a brute he had been to laugh! He paced up and down the veranda saying to himself, "A little roll of blue ribbon, a little roll of blue ribbon!" He stumbled on the saddle that Lieber had sent him. It held his eye. He picked up the bridle and ran down to the pasture. He caught the oldest and gentlest of the horses, opened a gap in the fence, and led him out. Then he called Bonifacio.

"Listen," he said; "you must take the fattest of the steers, the red one with the blazed face; you must drive him into the town and sell him."

The darky demurred.

"It is too late for market, master."

"It does not matter. You must do as I say," said Gerry, angrily. "You must sell the steer. If you cannot sell him, you must give him for blue ribbon. Do you understand? You must bring back blue ribbon for your mistress. She says she must have a little roll of blue ribbon." The darky acquiesced. Together they saddled the old horse, and Bonifacio, armed with a long bamboo to prod the fat steer, mounted, and cut out his charge from the herd. Gerry accompanied him to the bridge.

"You understand, blue ribbon. A roll of blue ribbon," he shouted.

The old darky nodded gravely and repeated:

"Yes, master, a roll of blue ribbon. I'll not forget."

Hours passed, and Bonifacio returned. He laid a little package and some money beside his master. He unsaddled the old horse and turned him into the pasture; then he came back, sat down at Gerry's feet, and slept. Gerry looked with wonder on his nodding head. He took his fingers from his ears. On the instant a high, unearthly shriek seemed to rend itself through flesh, through walls, and then tore on swift wings into the vast silence that stretched away into the night. Gerry dropped his face in his hands and sobbed. A low moaning was coming from the house, and then a new, strange sound,—a sound that struck straight at the heart,— the first wail of the first-born. The moaning caught on that cry, stumbled, and recovered into a thin, weak laugh. Pain had passed, and with the child was born laugh

ing in love with her. She knew that he would come back. How should she meet him?

She was still debating the point when Collingeford arrived in the city. Upon arrival, he called on Mrs. J. Y., and then on Nance and then, of course, on Alix. As she came into the room he felt a strange fluttering in his throat. It stopped his words of greeting. He stuttered and stared. He had never felt so glad at the sight of any one.

"What are you looking so dismayed about?" cried Alix, with a smile and holding out her hand. "Has a short year changed me so much? Am I so thin or so fat?"

Collingeford recovered himself.

"Neither too thin nor too fat. It is perfection, not imperfection, that dismays a man. You call it a short year?" he added gravely. "It 's been an eternity, not a year."

But Alix was not to be diverted from her tone of badinage. She looked him over critically.

"Well," she said, "I congratulate you. I did n't know before that bronze could bronze. What a lot of health you carry about with you!"

They sat and stared at each other. Each found the other good to look upon. Seen alone, Collingeford's tall, tense figure or the fragile quality of Alix's pale beauty would have seemed hard to match. Seen together, they were wonderfully in tone. Alix grew grave under inspection, Collingeford nervous. "There is no news?" he asked.

"None," said Alix, and a far-away look came into her eyes as if her mind were off thousands of miles, intent on a search of its own.

Collingeford broke the spell. He jumped up and said he had come for just one thing, to take her out for a walk. It was one of those nippy early winter afternoons cut out to fit a walk. Alix must put on her things. She did, and together they walked the long length of the avenue and out into the park.

By that time they had decided it was a warm afternoon, after all—almost warm enough to sit down. They tried it. Collingeford sat half turned on the bench and devoured Alix with his eyes.

A full-blooded, clean young man in the

presence of beauty is not a reasonable being. Collingeford was trying to be reasonable, and was failing utterly despite the fact that he did not say a word. And just as he was going to say a word Alix gave him a full, measuring look and said almost hastily:

"It is too cold, after all; quite chilly. It was our walking so fast deceived us." She rose and started tentatively toward the gate. "Come on, Honorable Percy," she said playfully.

Collingeford caught up with her and said moodily:

"If you call me Honorable Percy again, I shall dub you Honest Alix."

They were walking down the avenue. "Honest Alix is n't half bad," he continued thoughtfully. tinued thoughtfully. "The race has got into the habit of yoking the word honest to our attitude toward other people's pennies, but it 's a good old word that stands for trustworthy, sincere, truthful, and all the other adjectives that fit straight riding."

"Speaking of riding, Mr. Collingeford, you 're riding for a fall." Alix glanced at him meaningly.

"How did you know?" he stammered, and then went on rather sullenly: "Anyway, you 're wrong. I'm not. But I

was just going to." He prodded viciously at the cracks in the pavement with his stick.

"Don't," said Alix-"don't do that, I mean. You'll break your stick, and it 's the one I like."

Collingeford turned a flushed face to her. "Look here, Alix," he said, "you are honest and sincere and all those things I said. Don't let 's hedge-not just now. If your bad luck does n't let up, if you learn anything,-anything you don't want to know; I can't say it right out,-would you-d' you think you ever would-”

Alix did not smile. He was too much in earnest, and she liked him too much, was too much at one with him, not to feel what he was going through.

"I like your Honest Alix," she said after a pause, "and I 'm going to let her do the talking for a moment. If I learned absolutely that-that Gerry can never come back to me, there is no man that I would turn to quicker than to you." Collingeford gave her a grateful look, and the flush under his tan deepened. "Don't mis

understand me," she went on. "I like you a whole lot, but I have never thought of marrying any one but Gerry. I'd like to marry Gerry. I've never married him yet, not really."

They walked on for some time in silence. Collingeford's thoughts had raced away southward, and Alix's followed them. unerringly.

"Don't make one horrible mistake, Percy," she said when she was sure. "Don't imagine that

I could ever love the bearer of ill tidings." Collingeford flushed, this time with shame.

"No; of course not," he stammered. They walked on in a full silence. Collingeford's shoulders. drooped. For the first time in his life he felt old.

"You are right, you are always right," he said at last. "I shall go away-somewhere where it's easy to sweat."

"Somewhere where it's easy to sweat!" exclaimed Alix. "What an ugly thought."

"It's only Bodsky," said Collingeford, reminiscently. "Bodsky says you can drown any woman's memory in sweat. Good old Bod! I

They went in, and he bought a passage for England. He was to sail the following afternoon. He looked so glum over it that Alix consented to lunch with him and see him off.

He came for her the next day a little late, but when she saw his face, she felt a shock and forgot to chide him. Her eyes mirrored the trouble in his, but somehow she felt that it was not the parting from her that had turned him pale in a

Drawn by Reginald Birch

wonder where I shall find him."

"Oh," said Alix, "if it 's Bodsky's, one must n't quarrel with it simply because it is ugly. But-"

"But what?" said Collingeford.

"I was going to say, 'But what naked language!' Perhaps it is one of those truths one shrinks from because it starts in by slapping one's face. Anyway, even if it is a truth, it 's horrid. It hurts a woman to be forgotten."

Collingeford smiled.

"Just so," he said, and stopped before an up-town ticket agency. "Do you mind?" he asked, with a wave of his hand.

LXXXVII-10

night. He helped her into the waiting cab and then sank back into his corner.

Alix laid her gloved hand on his knee. "What is it?" she asked. Collingeford's face twitched. He fixed his eyes through the cab window on nothing.

"Bodsky," he said, "is dead. He has been dead for months."

"Oh," cried Alix, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry for you." She did not try to say any more. She had put all her heart into those few words.

Collingeford drew out his pocket-book and took from it a soiled sheet of paper,