She looked at him in pretty amazement.  “To the corner of this field?”

“Yes, I knew, of course, that if I followed the fence it was bound to lead me around the field and so back to where I started.  That’s why I kept on; I thought I could finish the job and get home, even if Snip did compel me to ride the fence on foot.”

“But don’t you know that this is a drift fence?” she asked, her eyes dancing with fun.

“That’s what the Dean called it,” he admitted.  “But if it’s drifting anywhere, it’s going end on.  Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t catch the corner.”

“But there is no corner to a drift fence,” she cried.

“No corner?”

She shook her head as if not trusting herself to speak.

“And it doesn’t go around anything—­there is no field?” Again she shook her head.

“Just runs away out in the country somewhere and stops?”

She nodded.  “It must be eighteen or twenty miles from here to the end.”

“Well, of all the silly fences!” he exclaimed, looking away to the mountain peaks toward which he had been so laboriously making his way.  “Honestly, now, do you think that is any way for a respectable fence to act?  And the Dean told me to be sure and get home before dark!”

Then they laughed together—­laughed until their horses must have wondered.

As they rode on, she explained the purpose of the drift fence, and how it came to an end so many miles away and so far from water that the cattle do not usually find their way around it.

“And now the magic!” he said.  “You have made a most unreasonable, unconventional and altogether foolish fence appear reasonable, proper and perfectly sane.  Please explain your coming with Snip to my relief.”

“Which was also unreasonable, unconventional and altogether foolish?” she questioned.

“Which was altogether wonderful, unexpected and delightful,” he retorted.

“It is all perfectly simple,” she explained.  “Being rather—­” She hesitated.  “Well, rather sick of too much of nothing at all, you know, I went over to the Cross-Triangle right after dinner to visit a little with Stella—­professionally.”

“Professionally?” he asked.

She nodded brightly.  “For the good of my soul.  Stella’s a famous soul doctor.  The best ever except one, and she lives far away—­away back east in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“Yes, I know her, too,” he said gravely.

And while they laughed at the absurdity of his assertion, they did not know until long afterward how literally true it was.

“Of course, I knew about you,” she continued.  “Phil told me how you tried to ride that unbroken horse, the last time he was at our house.  Phil thinks you are quite a wonderful man.”

“No doubt,” said Patches mockingly.  “I must have given a remarkable exhibition on that occasion.”  He was wondering just how much Phil had told her.