way.

She did not cry, since the rest of life was left for crying, and she would live, like as not, to be a chilly old woman in the chimney corner, just as her aunt Paybody had been. By the time you got there, would you have forgotten; or better, would you care one snap of the fingers for any man any more? She smiled and gulped, staring out of the window, looking up the street. She was savage, and all she felt now was that she would like to kill those two down there, just as she had wanted to smother that baby. She had no pity, not a touch. She only had an urgent practicality. She developed a stubborn, a rugged and masculine acceptance of facts.

If only she need not see them again, either of them, if they would drift away without one more sight or sound! She only asked to stay alone at Medmerry, to work and to forget. And, even as she prayed frantically for just this, the door opened, and Lawrence came up. His face was, so to say, all to pieces. Yet he nearly laughed when he saw her squatting on the stairs. It seemed such a silly and a little-girl thing to do; this large, cool Jane of over forty. He came up close and he timidly touched her hand. "I'm sorry, Jane, but it is Hannah that I love."

"Of course. Take her away and marry her if you can. That's settled. Are you"-she showed some passion"afraid, Lawrence?"

"I'm not afraid," he returned, slowly, "unless it's of myself. I thought I had forgotten her; upon my soul, I did. Don't you remember I laughed at her? That ought to be enough. I joked about her that night I came back. But directly I saw her again in the field out there "

'Is she a widow?"

"A widow!" He appeared to think hard, and he looked frightened to death. "She never mentioned. I suppose so." "Well, go and find out. Why didn't you before?" asked Jane. "You'd better. And be quick."

He went away in a great hurry, and Jane continued to stare at the street.

"If he can't marry her," she whispered to herself with hot anguish, "I-I haven't the spirit of a fly. They may call our banns for the second time next Sunday, then."

She sat waiting. The blood died down in her face. When Lawrence came back he was not only looking glad, but he seemed to expect her to share in it. He had never spared her and never would.

"It's all right; yes, a widow," he whispered. "Husband killed in a railway accident, and left her without a penny, poor girl!"

"A Manchester man?" asked Jane, with a lift of her faint eyebrow.

This was a whip about his shoulders if you like; but Lawrence never felt the curl of it. "I suppose so; I never asked. You can't think of everything, Jane, at a time like this."

"Well, go away," said Jane, not stirring, "go and ask again if you like." "But aren't you coming down? Don't sit there!"

He went obediently away, stepping the stairs gingerly as if from a sick-room.

Jane knew that presently she would have to see to everything: give Hannah a change of decent clothing, have the trap got ready (for they should not stay here one single night), turn out that north room by and by, and send Lawrence his things.

They might even get married and settle at Choller's. This came to her as a deadly, insupportable thought. Lawrence, quite simply, would expect her to be neighborly. He would say to himself, "Why not?"

P

EARLY gulls, old and wise in the lore of their fathers, circle up from the banks of the Jordan. In the east they can descry a great city shimmering white against the purple foot-hills of the snow-clad Wasatch; in the west, the sunlight upon the everchanging emerald and turquoise hues of a lake that laps the base of the gigantic Oquirrh range. Poplars, branching boxelders, cottonwoods, and an occasional rose-of-Sharon tree fringe the outskirts of the distant Mormon capital, proclaiming it an oasis of comfort as well as of splendor. Here and there the tremendous valley in which it lies is dotted with prosperous green farms, but in the main the fifteen-mile tract of alkaline monotony between the city and the lake is relieved by nothing save witheredlooking sagebrush. The gulls rise a thousand feet in the air, and only then are they as high as were the waters of the ancient lake that once stretched three hundred and fifty miles through this huge basin. Marks of the water-line still show far up on the mountain-sides, and gull legends bear witness that it was nearly three thousand miles around this prehistoric lake with its interesting crustacea and its outlet to the sea.

Now three comparatively small bodies of water are all that remain of the overgrown pond of the past. Of these Utah Lake alone, which empties into Great Salt Lake through the Jordan River, is filled with fresh water; Sevier Lake, scarcely a mud-puddle in dry weather, and Great Salt Lake, are unbelievably salt. What became of the more extensive lake, known by geologists as Lake Bonneville in honor of the man who discovered its shore-line in 1831, no one can say with certainty, but it is supposed that climatic changes finally brought about its shrinkage by evaporation until the waters were too low to connect with the stream that joined the Snake River through Red Rock Pass. At any rate, the lake was left without the outlet which had carried away the modicum of salt borne down by the inflowing rivers. Evaporation went on, the rivers did not desist from bringing salt, and at last this inland body of water became a solution of brine. Some authorities claim that Lake Bonneville dried away completely, leaving only ripple marks in a desert of gleaming sand, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that before it vanished entirely there were other climatic changes which caused more rainfall, increased the size

of the streams, and so preserved the present lake. However it came to exist, Great Salt Lake to-day, as in the centuries past, continues to reflect the mountains in its opalescent depths, and will probably never cease to do so in spite of the dire prophecies resulting from its curious habit of receding and coming back.

Because of the queer phenomenon of its occasional withdrawal, the area of this surfless lake is variable. Sometimes it is ninety miles long, sometimes only sixty. The mystery of its movements is not known, but for many years it has been the subject of wild conjectures and much serious investigation. At one period, not long ago, the lake was shrinking in such an alarming manner that those who regarded it as an old friend were filled with apprehension. Among other ingenious theories was the one that a hole had been made in the bottom of the lake by driving piles, and all the water was pouring down into a subter

ranean cavern.

Another claimed that the rivers had been diverted for irrigating purposes, and that, besides, there was less rainfall. The old settlers meanwhile placidly chewed their gum and gathered crops. Their composure was not unfounded. When the scientists were in the midst of demonstrating that

apparently caused the water to overflow, though its volume was in reality the same; but the unbelievers in the climatic change theory scoffed at such a statement and pointed out that the unchecked denudation of the hills was increasing the amount of water transported to the lake by the streams. No really adequate explanation of the lake's vagaries has ever been furnished, but there is a popular superstition that the water recedes every seven years, and then comes rushing back at the end of three. The numbers three and seven in themselves savor of witchcraft. While scholars study the ripple marks and work out their formulas, the lake lies year after year in the sun and rain, now golden brown like the algae on the rocks, now filled with every tint of

a painter's pallet -a wonderful foreground for the mountains looming out of the lavender haze upon its edge, a refreshing contrast to the dingy sagebrush and the glare of the snowwhite shore.

Poets, as a rule, do not sing of matters commercial, and yet there is an epic quality about all the industries connected with the lake. Especially is this true of the saltworks, which are represented to the ordinary traveler by great, smooth mounds of crude salt ready for the dun colored freight-car or the weather beaten refinery. They resemble truncated pyramids more than anything else, and the imaginative mind straightway repictures the blazing Egyptian sun and mirroring Nile.

the lake was disappearing for all time, it suddenly rose again higher than it had been in a decade. Discomfited, the geologists then stated and tried to prove that there had been a volcanic disturbance of the lake bottom which

On April 1st the brine from the lake is pumped into the salt - beds, or

the fresh, clean air, she smiles up at him wistfully, and her frail hand points over the railing while she quotes:

"The water, like a witch's oils,

Burns green and blue and white." "It's pretty, isn't it, grandmother?" says the young man, sympathetically, helping her to rise in order that they may round up the children and catch the train.

She pauses a moment without respond ing, and gazes once more at the tranquil lake. "They say she's going out again," she at last states, regretfully, and then adds with assurance, "but she'll come back; aye, she'll come back."

Thus has the personality of this desert lake taken hold of those who know it, and thus would it take hold of you, could you, after the last train has left for the city, see the moon rising above those austere peaks and covering the waves with fleece of gold while the now darkened pavilion towers like a palace of carved ivory against the starlit sky. The scene is so solemn, so vast, so full of the infinite, that it would make a little ache steal into your heart and a gray mist fill your eyes; but you, too, would turn away from it, murmuring confidently, "She'll come back; aye, she'll come back."