inaugurated whereby cattle and cowboys and horses were spared
brutality and injury.

Madeline established an extensive vegetable farm, and she planted
orchards. The climate was superior to that of California, and,
with abundant water, trees and plants and gardens flourished and
bloomed in a way wonderful to behold. It was with ever-increasing
pleasure that Madeline walked through acres of ground once bare,
now green and bright and fragrant. There were poultry-yards and
pig-pens and marshy quarters for ducks and geese. Here in the
farming section of the ranch Madeline found employment for the
little colony of Mexicans. Their lives had been as hard and
barren as the dry valley where they had lived. But as the valley
had been transformed by the soft, rich touch of water, so their
lives had been transformed by help and sympathy and work. The
children were wretched no more, and many that had been blind
could now see, and Madeline had become to them a new and blessed
virgin.

Madeline looked abroad over these lands and likened the change in
them and those who lived by them to the change in her heart. It
may have been fancy, but the sun seemed to be brighter, the sky
bluer, the wind sweeter. Certain it was that the deep green of
grass and garden was not fancy, nor the white and pink of
blossom, nor the blaze and perfume of flower, nor the sheen of
lake and the fluttering of new-born leaves. Where there had been
monotonous gray there was now vivid and changing color. Formerly
there had been silence both day and night; now during the sunny
hours there was music. The whistle of prancing stallions pealed
in from the grassy ridges. Innumerable birds had come and, like