wastelands of the west and hide it away in that grim sod house.
There were other pictures besides the prized one of General Custer, some of them praiseworthy, others of pale, watery fruits and sickly flowers, such as young ladies do before marriage, when romance tinges the world with an Indian summer mist. Dr. Hall was afraid Mrs. Cottrell had done them; when he caught the half hopeful, half doubtful, look in her eyes as she ranged them over the collection, he was sadly sure.
A popular song was spread on the music-rack of the piano, the red cap close by it, and on the floor beside the stool the riding-whip that somebody had stripped from the wrist to hit off this sentimental melody. On top of the solemn old instrument there were blue and white flowers in an Indian vase, plucked from the gardens of this wild, wide-sweeping prairie.
So, this was the home of Elizabeth. She must have reached up with tiny fingers when her head came no higher than the fingerboard, to touch the keys of this instrument, strange and thrilling, as she stood with her hands stretched out now to touch the harp of life. He wondered if her heart had yearned back to it in the years she must have spent away, and if she was glad to be there now in the sad gray house that had nurtured so much comeliness.
Her shoulder was three inches below his own as she walked beside him, and the sun was in her hair. If an army officer had not married her, it was because she would not have him. Dr. Hall was as firmly convinced of that as if the conviction rested on the history of the
