Wild Youth, Volume 1.

a great d

nd saffron; but the glow was so soft as to suggest a flame which did not burn; which only shed radiance, colour and an ethereal mist. All the width of land and life between was full of peace as far as eye could see. The plains were bountiful with golden harvest, an

n greater!" added Orlando, g

ay had been, with all he had done and seen, it lacked a glimpse of the face he had not seen for a whole month. The voice, he had not heard it since it sof

of merciless Fate. It was the companionship of trouble; it was the bird, pursued by a hawk, calling across the lonely valley to its mate. "Oh, Orlando!" He had waked in the morning with the words in his ears to make hi

oves. It is as the sound of a bell in the distance, a familiar note with a new meaning, revealing new things of life in the panorama o

t loneliness where she lived, and to bear which she sought help. But the "Oh, Orlando!" which was wrung from her, almost unknowingly, was th

that each understands the other by one note or inflection of the voice, by one little act of tenderness. These, or one of these, tell the whole story, the everlastin

id not punish; at a sport by which the earliest men in the earliest age of the world made life a rare sensation. The man who has not chased the wild pony in the hills with the lasso on his arm, riding, as they sa

ts of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks and the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone upon some promontory, and he had made up his mind that if, and when, there came a day of broncho-busting, he would become a hunter of the little gray mare. When th

gone mad-for the maddest, wisest, carefullest thing on earth is a broncho, which itself was once a wild pony of the hills, and has been hunted down, thrown by the lasso, saddled, b

ed for courage, such as he had shown in the recent affair when he had driven off the men who were robbing Joel Mazarine, and also for an idea, steadily spr

t his little gray mare, lassoing her like a veteran. He had helped to break her, and had sent her home from the improvised corral by one of his men. He had then parted from the others, who had dispersed to their various ranches with their prizes, and had ridden away on the broncho with

soft, bright, wild eye, which had fought and fought to resist subjection; but which, overpowered by the stronger will of

o think of Orlando; yet, sleeping and waking, he was with her. Their homes were four miles apart, although, in one sense, they were a million miles apart by law and the convention which shuts

l at Tralee-the girl suddenly come to be woman, with her free soul born into understanding, yet who was as much a capt

o rob Mazarine, and to put Orlando out of action by a bullet. Suspicion had been directed against the McMahons, but Joel Mazarine had declared that it was not the McMahons who had attacked hi

him near to his other self, his mate in the scheme of things. There was something almost pagan and primitive, something near to the very beginning of

what had happened that very morning before he started for the hills. Soon after daybreak, Li Choo the Chinaman had co

She cly. What you want me do, I do. That

write on it the one word "Always." He then folded the paper up until it was no bigger than a waistcoat button, and gave it to Li Choo. Also, he offered a five-doll

y me," he said. "You want me come, I come. W

happened. The broncho he was riding, as though the disturbance in Orlando's breast had passed into its own w

galloping on the prairie. Presently as he watched the headlong gallop, the horse came down and the rider was thrown.

ne its day's work, it reached out upon the trail as though fresh

vantage on a lonely rise about eighty feet above the level of the prairie. Where hors

It was, as it were, an answer to the "Oh, Orlando!" which had been ringing in his ears. There, l

to his face with a rush. Her heart was beating; her pulse trembled under his fingers; she was only unconscious. But was there other injury? Was arm or leg broken? He called to her. Then with an

opening gates of a flume, with all the weight of the river behind. As her face flooded, she shivered with emotion. She was resting against his knee; her head was upon his arm; his face was very

Here they were who, without words or acts, had been to each other what Adam and Eve were in the Garden, without furtiveness, and guiltless of secret acts which poison Love. What restrained them was native, childlike camaraderie, intense, unusual and strange. The world would call them ro

is spirit, his heart beating terribly hard. "I'm all righ

Are you sure?" he

of his knee." Don't you see my legs and arms are all right

ing near. Again she shivered, and her h

ard in life at the hands of men and women, because the only ones with whom, in her seclusion, she had had to do, had sacrificed her, all sav

y longer. He wouldn't let me ride alone, go anywhere alone. I had t

nkle that ought to

ll put him out of pain. He bolted with you, and he'd have killed you, if he cou

ways, because she always seemed to be in the grasp of something against which no pressure could avail. She was being commanded now, but there was that in the voice which, while c

ly Orlando had opened a vein in the chestnut'

or death itself, which has its own terrors to animal life, or whether it was as though a naked, shivering animal soul passed by, the broncho started, shi

little laugh. "It's the worst of luck, and-and

n effort at self-control. "Don't you see how terrible it is?" sh

that distance, of c

and he helped her up. His face was anxious. "Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked. "There's noth

walk even a mile," she con

t badly inside," he

t," she answered. "I

ere's a good place over there-see!" He pointed to a little rise in the ground

swered nervously. "I don't need

red soothingly. "Please do as you're told. I'

youth. Now her youth seemed to drink eagerly a cup of obedience-as though it were the wine of life itself. She ev

ad never in any real sense been a wife, or truly understood what wifedom meant, or heard in her heart the call of the cradle. She had been

alliance, or whatever it might be, with Orlando. She knew the law: one wife to one husband; and the wife to look neither to the right nor to the left, to the east nor to the west, to the north nor to the south, b

ein' the statue and the dummy you are. Am I a drunkard? Am I a thief? Am I a nighthawk? Do I go off lookin' for other women? Don't I keep the commandments? Ain't

ear it; and she had said to him, in unexpected revolt, that her tongue w

which he delivered at the appropriate moment, though he had had it to deliver for some time. It was to the effect that the Clerk of the C

savagely across the shoulders with the whip, and then stamped out of the house, invoking God to punish the rebellious and the heathen, while Li Choo, shrinki

her face to the wall, close up to it, letting the cold plaster cool her hot palms, for now she burned with a

a little of the way to T

had reached a shr

k; I tremble all over," she added, as she sat down upon

lando. "He's the sort that

answered, "but Li Choo came in time,

horsewhipping Chinam

e a que

d saddled it and rode-I didn't care where I rode. I didn't care how fast the horse went. I didn't care what happened to me. And here I am, and-But oh, I do care what happens t

e was that in it which made her feel that she must not give way any further. In Orlando's veins was Southern

ike that," she excl

alve to a wound. He put a hand upon himself. "I'll go to

uldn't get there till midnight, and you couldn't get back here with a wagon for another couple of

nute," sai

dle from its back, detached from it a rain-coat

t isn't cold to-night. You only feel c

thing. Listen! Don't you hear something stirring-the

e dogs and things about. The more you listen, the

be a search-party out from Tralee, too, at the first streak of dawn. You can't make the journey, so the only thing to be done is to wait here. That coat will k

"No, I can't; I'm afraid. It's a

htened about," he interrupt

name, and it made her shiver with a new feeling.

to do-whatever I ask you to

added quickly, "For you won't ask me to do anything I don't

her, and had prepared it, with his knife, cutting the branches of small shrubs and gr

me and lie down, an

nt to sit here. I've never felt the night like this before. It's wonderful, and I'm not nearly so cold now. I know I oughtn't to be cold at all, in the middle of summer like this." She paused, and seemed

ke an aunt I had-Aunt Samantha. She was my father's sister. I used to love her to visit my mother. She always brought me things, and she gave them to me as if they were on silver dishes-like a ceremony. She was so prim, I used to call her Aunt Primrose. She made me

"Don't you hear something

your ears when the sun is busy, but when Aunt Primrose Moon is saying, 'Hush! Hush!' to the naughty children of this world, you can hear a whole new population at work, cracking away like mad. Sa

, and then-" He pointed to a spot about twenty yards away. "Do you see the two big stones there? Well, when I've finished my walk and my talk with Aunty Primrose"-he

a long sigh came from her lip

"I'm too hot as it is." And he loosen

ut your Aunt Samantha, and about yourself, and your home before you came out here

ainst her yesterday, and the life she had lived. Or was it only that she had

d. "Say, it won't be a very interesting story. Bette

ng lashes touched her cheek. There was something very wilful in her beauty, and her body too had delicate, melancho

er, that if he did, she would not go back to Tralee to-morrow; that tomorrow she would defy the leviathan; and that tomorrow he would not have the courage to say the things he must say to the evil-hearted master of Tralee, who, he knew, would challenge them with ugly accusations. He must be abl

own, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from t

h she dared not let the thought take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By and by, however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light of the moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did crush the dry gra

ITOR'S B

ics, the

size of four wall