Coming to the big, low gap, the girl looked far away to the blue line of hills, miles, and miles away.  The stranger had come from over these, she thought; and then she fell to wondering what that world beyond the farthest cloud-like ridge was like.

Of all the people Sammy had ever known, young Stewart was the only one who had seen even the edge of that world to tell her about it.  Her father and her friends, the Matthews’s, never talked of the old days.  She had known Ollie from a child.  With Young Matt they had gone to and from the log school house along the same road.  Once, before Mr. Stewart’s death, the boy had gone with his father for a day’s visit to the city, and ever after had been a hero to his backwoods schoolmates.  It was this distinction, really, that first won Sammy’s admiration, and made them sweethearts before the girl’s skirts had touched the tops of her shoes.  Before the woman in her was fairly awake she had promised to be his wife; and they were going away now to live in that enchanted land.

Spying an extra choice bunch of grass a few steps to one side of the path, Brownie turned suddenly toward the valley; and the girl’s eyes left the distant ridge for the little cabin and the sheep corral in Mutton Hollow.  Sammy always spoke of that cabin as “Young Matt’s house.”  And, all unbidden now, the thought came, who would live with the big fellow down there in the valley when she had gone far away to make her home with Ollie and his people in the city?

An impatient tug at the reins informed Brownie that his mistress was aware of his existence, and, for a time, the pony was obliged to pass many a luscious bunch of grass.  But soon the reins fell slack again.  The little horse moved slowly, and still more slowly, until, by the relaxed figure of his rider, he knew it was safe to again browse on the grass along the path.

So, wondering, dreaming, Sammy Lane rode down the trail that morning—­the trail that is nobody knows how old.  And on the hill back of the Matthews house a team was standing idle in the middle of the field.

At the big rock on the mountain side, where the trail seems to pause a moment before starting down to the valley, the girl slipped from her saddle, and, leaving Brownie to wander at will, climbed to her favorite seat.  Half reclining in the warm sunshine, she watched the sheep feeding near, and laughed aloud as she saw the lambs with wagging tails, greedily suckling at their mother’s sides; near by in a black-haw bush a mother bird sat on her nest; a gray mare, with a week old colt following on unsteady legs, came over the ridge; and not far away; a mother sow with ten squealing pigs came out of the timber.  Keeping very still the young woman watched until they disappeared around the mountain.  Then, lifting her arms above her head, she stretched her lithe form out upon the warm rocky couch with the freedom and grace of a wild thing of the woods.