“It’s all along of me hirin’ him!  I wouldn’t be surprised if paw died.  I’m thinkin’ of shakin’ him out after his teeth.  ’Take not up with the enemy of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.’”

But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs. Yellett’s dismal prognostications of the evil that might befall her for employing Leander.  She spoke more with the air of one who produces incidents to prove an argument than of one who anticipates a calamity.

Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the side of the wagon, began to show symptoms of joy comparable to that of the vanguard of the Israelites, catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land.  Touching Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he pointed to a white tent and the remains of a camp-fire.  Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to “Hallo, Ben!” But Ben was at work at the vat, which was still a quarter of a mile further up the mountain; so Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander and bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in building a fire, putting on coffee, and making her little party comfortable.  So various was her efficiency that she seemed no less at home in these simple domestic tasks than when guiding her horses, goddess-like, through the cloud-burst.  And Mary Carmichael, succumbing gradually to the revivifying influence of the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged honestly to herself a warmth of affection for her hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created about her that made even Virginia and her aunts seem less the only pivot of rational existence.  She felt that she had come West with but one eye, as it were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers of vision were fast becoming increased a hundredfold.  How very tame life must be, she reflected, as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not know Mrs. Yellett, how over-serious to those who did not know Leander!  Yet, after all, she knew that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her brief but illuminating acquaintance with Judith Rodney.  To Mary, freed for the first time in her life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings, Judith seemed the incarnation of all the splendor and heroism of the West.  And in the glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there not to abandon the Yellett educational problem till she should have solved it successfully.  She might not be born to valiant achievement, like these sturdy folk about her, but she might as well prove to them that an Eastern tenderfoot was not all feebleness and inefficiency.

“Leander!” called Mrs. Yellett.  “Just act as if you was to home and wash up these dishes.”

XVIII

Foreshadowed

Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen.  She had dreamed of it, just before daylight, and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living, again and again, through each frightful detail.  It had happened—­there, in the very room, and before the children; the noise of it had startled them; and then she woke and knew she had been dreaming.  In the dream the noise had wakened the children—­when it really happened they must never know.  It wouldn’t be fair to them; they needed a “clean start.”