It is going to help me to sit up and perhaps to walk about a little," answered Gwen, with blue-gray eyes open wide.
"Oh," said The Pilot, "it was very mean to stand by and see you hurt like that." "Why, you silly," replied Owen, impatiently, "they want my back to get straight and strong." "Oh, then they didn't do it just for fun or for nothing ?" said The Pilot, innocently.
Gwen gazed at him in amazed and speechless wrath, and he went on: "I mean they love you though they let you be hurt; or rather they let the doctors hurt you BECAUSE they loved you and wanted to make you better." Gwen kept her eyes fixed with curious earnestness upon his face till the light began to dawn.
"Do you mean," she began slowly, "that though God let me fall, He loves me ?" The Pilot nodded; he could not trust his voice.
"I wonder if that can be true," she said, as if to herself; and soon we said good-by and came away--The Pilot, limp and voiceless, but I triumphant, for I began to see a little light for Gwen.
But the fight was by no means over; indeed, it was hardly well begun.
For when the autumn came, with its misty, purple days, most glorious of all days in the cattle country, the old restlessness came back and the fierce refusal of her lot.

Then came the day of the round-up.

Why should she have to stay while all went after the cattle?
The Duke would have remained, but she impatiently sent him away.

She was weary and heart-sick, and, worst of all, she began to feel that most terrible of burdens, the burden of her life to others.

I was much relieved when The Pilot came in fresh and bright, waving a bunch of wild-flowers in his hand.
"I thought they were all gone," he cried.