the reason, Ferrier remained strictly celibate.

 

In every other respect he conformed to the religion of the young settlement, and

gained the name of being an orthodox and straight-walking man.

 

Lucy Ferrier grew up within the log-house, and assisted her adopted father in

all his undertakings. The keen air of the mountains and the balsamic odour of

the pine trees took the place of nurse and mother to the young girl. As year

succeeded to year she grew taller and stronger, her cheek more ruddy, and her

step more elastic. Many a wayfarer upon the high road which ran by Ferrier’s

farm felt long-forgotten thoughts revive in their mind as they watched her lithe

girlish figure tripping through the wheatfields, or met her mounted upon her

father’s mustang, and managing it with all the ease and grace of a true child of

the West. So the bud blossomed into a flower, and the year which saw her father

the richest of the farmers left her as fair a specimen of American girlhood as

could be found in the whole Pacific slope.

 

It was not the father, however, who first discovered that the child had

developed into the woman. It seldom is in such cases. That mysterious change is

too subtle and too gradual to be measured by dates. Least of all does the maiden

herself know it until the tone of a voice or the touch of a hand sets her heart

thrilling within her, and she learns, with a mixture of pride and of fear, that

a new and a larger nature has awoken within her. There are few who cannot recall

that day and remember the one little incident which heralded the dawn of a new

life.