The long, golden fall of Alberta was especially beautiful that year, and although well into November, the weather was as warm and sunny as the month of May. Winter came late to Alberta, sometimes withholding its frosty hand till considerably after Christmas; but it stayed late, extending even into the spring months. There was a popular saying that there was no spring in Alberta; one stepped directly out of winter into summer. But the Alberta fall was incomparably beautiful. The days were laden with sunlight, and the night skies, with their myriad stars, set in a firmament more beautiful than anywhere else on earth, were remarkable for their lunar rainbows, and the white blaze of the Northern lights.

Yet the long, sunlit days, and the cool, starry nights brought no balm to the distracted Nettie. She felt undone—body and soul.

As she trailed listlessly across the barnyard, she no longer chirruped happily to the wee chicks or reproved the contentious mother hens. All joy in work and in contact with the live things on the ranch was gone for her. She lived on like a machine, automatically wound up. There were certain daily duties to be done; she went about them dully and mechanically.

One November evening as she came, basket in hand, out of the cowbarn, where she had been looking for eggs in the stalls where the hens loved to lay, Jake raced through the yard on his broncho, shouting and screaming with excitement.

"Him! Him!" wildly yelled Jake, pointing toward where along the Banff highway a solitary horseman could be seen. At the word "Him" Nettie's first thought was of the Bull, and she stiffened and paled; but as she looked down the slope, to where the rider was passing through the main gate to the road, she turned even whiter, and longing and fear together shook her so violently that she could hardly keep from swooning at the sight of the well-remembered wide hat, the bright flowing scarf, loosely tied beneath the boyish chin, the orange-colored chapps, and the peppery young broncho bearing his rider now so swiftly up that slope. She did not recover from her emotion in time to take flight, as her terrified impulse urged her, for Jake had already opened the gate of the corral, and Cyril passed through. He had seen the girl at the barn door, and leaping from his horse, was at her side in an instant.

The basket of eggs in her hand crashed to the ground. She lifted up both her hands, and her eyes looked wildly about her like a trapped thing, seeking some way of escape, as steadily, with face aglow, he closed in upon her. With a muffled cry, she beat him back from her, crying loudly:

"No-o! No! No!"

Like one possessed, she pushed him from her with mad strength and rushed through the corral out into the yard. Dumfounded, Cyril looked after her, and then calling her by name he pursued her.

"Nettie! Nettie! I say—Nettie!"

She fled as if demented, running in a circle around the house; then darted in at the back kitchen door. She tried to hold the door closed, but his impetuous hand forced it open. Her breath coming in spasmodic gasps, leaning against the wall of the back kitchen for support, Nettie faced him.

She cried out loudly:

"Go away! Go away!"

"Go away? What do you mean? What for? Nettie, for God's sake, what's the matter, little girl?"

She repeated the words wildly, with all her force.

"Go away! Go! Don't come near me. Don't touch me. Don't even look at me."

"Why not? What's the matter? You're playin' a game, and it ain't fair to go so far. What's the matter, girl? Nettie—you—you ain't gone back on me, are you?"

She could not meet those imploring young eyes, and turned bodily about, so that now her face was to the wall, and her back to him. Her voice sounded muffled, strangled:

"Leave me be. I mustn't see you."

"Why not? Since when? What've I done? I got a right to know. What's happened?"

His voice quavered though he sought manfully to control it. There was a long, tense silence, and then Nettie Day said in a low, dead voice:

"I ain't the same."

"You mean you've changed?" he demanded, and she answered in that same lost voice:

"Yes—all changed. I ain't the same."

He took this in slowly, his hands clenching, the hot tears scalding his lids. Then burst out with boyish anguish and passion:

"Don't say that, Nettie. I can't believe it. It ain't true. You and me—we're promised. I been thinking of nothing else. I built the little house for you. It's all ready now, dear, and I come on up to Bar Q now to tell you I got a chance to go to the States with the purebred stuff, and there's a bonus of $500 in it for me, and a $10 raise to my wages. Nettie, girl, I took him up on that proposition, because I wanted to do more for you."

"Why did you go away?" said Nettie harshly.

"I went on your account. You ain't mad about that, are you, girl? Why, I wanted to make things softer for you, and I got a chance now to make good money—$500, Nettie, and I says to myself: 'Here's where Nettie and me'll go off on our honeymoon to the U.S.,' and I come up here now thinking, 'Here's where we'll put one over on the Bull, and we'll slip down to Calgary and get married, and then we get aboard the train. I'll spring my wife on the outfit and——'"

He choked and gulped, and Nettie moaned aloud, crying:

"I tell you I ain't the same. I'm changed. You oughtn't to've gone away."

Dark suspicions began to mount and with their growth jealous fury caused him to swing her roughly about, so that again she faced him. But she evaded his glance, turning her head from side to side, so that she need not meet his accusing hot young eyes.

"You got another fellow, have you? Have you? You can answer that, anyway."

But there was no answer from the girl, and as his grip relaxed on her arms, her head dropped dumbly down. A cruel laugh broke from the boy's lips.

"I see! Someone's cut me out, heh? I'm dead on to you now. I got your number, I have. If you're that sort—if you couldn't stand a few months' separation without goin' back on a fellow, I'm well rid of you. I wish you luck with your new fellow. I hope he ain't the fool like I been."

Still there was no answer from the girl, standing there with her head down, and her arms hanging like a dead person's by her sides.

Presently there was a clatter of hoofs in the corral, and Cyril went out at a furious trot. As the flying horseman disappeared over the hills, Nettie slowly sank to her knees, and her arms stretched out, she cried aloud:

"I wisht I was dead! I wisht I was dead!"