YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK

[BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER]

By Gilbert Parker

CONTENTS:

 Volume 1. PROEM I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" II. CLOSING THE DOORS III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" V. A STORY TO BE TOLD

 Volume 2. VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY X. "S. O. S. " XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER

 Volume 3. XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU GO BACK FOR MINE" XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

This volume contains two novels dealing with the life of prairie peoplein the town of Askatoon in the far West. 'The World for Sale' and thelatter portion of 'The Money Master' deal with the same life, and 'TheMoney Master' contained some of the characters to be found in 'WildYouth'. 'The World for Sale' also was a picture of prairie country withstrife between a modern Anglo-Canadian town and a French-Canadian townin the West. These books are of the same people; but 'You NeverKnow Your Luck' and 'Wild Youth' have several characters which moveprominently through both. 

In the introduction to 'The World for Sale' in this series, I drew adescription of prairie life, and I need not repeat what was said there. 'In You Never Know Your Luck' there is a Proem which describes brieflythe look of the prairie and suggests characteristics of the life ofthe people. The basis of the book has a letter written by a wife to herhusband at a critical time in his career when he had broken his promiseto her. One or two critics said the situation is impossible, because noman would carry a letter unopened for a long number of years. My replyis: that it is exactly what I myself did. I have still a letter writtento me which was delivered at my door sixteen years ago. I have neverread it, and my reason for not reading it was that I realised, as Ithink, what its contents were. I knew that the letter would annoy, andthere it lies. The writer of the letter who was then my enemy is now myfriend. The chief character in the book, Crozier, was an Irishman, withall the Irishman's cleverness, sensitiveness, audacity, and timidity;for both those latter qualities are characteristic of the Irish race, and as I am half Irish I can understand why I suppressed a letter andwhy Crozier did. Crozier is the type of man that comes occasionally tothe Dominion of Canada; and Kitty Tynan is the sort of girl that thegreat West breeds. She did an immoral thing in opening the letter thatCrozier had suppressed, but she did it in a good cause--for Crozier'ssake; she made his wife write another letter, and she placed it againin the envelope for Crozier to open and see. Whatever lack of moralitythere was in her act was balanced by the good end to the story, thoughit meant the sacrifice of Kitty's love for Crozier, and the making ofhis wife happy once more. 

As for 'Wild Youth' I make no apology for it. It is still fresh in theminds of the American public, and it is true to the life. Some criticsfrankly called it melodramatic. I do not object to the term. I knownothing more melodramatic than certain of the plots of Shakespeare'splays. Thomas Hardy is melodramatic; Joseph Conrad is melodramatic;Balzac was melodramatic, and so were Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, andSir Walter Scott. The charge of melodrama is not one that should disturba writer of fiction. The question is, are the characters melodramatic. Will anyone suggest to me the marriage of a girl of seventeen with a manover sixty is melodramatic. It may be, but I think it tragical, and soit was in this case. As for Orlando Guise, I describe the man as I knewhim, and he is still alive. Some comments upon the story suggested thatit was impossible for a man to spend the night on the prairie with awoman whom he loved without causing her to forget her marriage vows. Itis not sentimental to say that is nonsense. It is a prurient mind thatonly sees evil in a situation of the sort. Why it should be desirable tomake a young man and woman commit a misdemeanor to secure the praise ofa critic is beyond imagination. It would be easy enough to do. I did itin The Right of Way. I did it in others of my books. What happens to oneman and one woman does not necessarily happen to another. There are menwho, for love of a woman, would not take advantage of her insecurity. There are others who would. In my books I have made both classes dotheir will, and both are true to life. It does not matter what one bookis or is not, but it does matter that an author writes his book with asense of the fitting and the true. 

Both these books were written to present that side of life in Canadawhich is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in bothtales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As forthe cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, andthe sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far morethan the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degreesbelow zero. Both these books present the summer side of Canada, which isas delightful as that of any climate in the world; both show the modernwestern life which is greatly changed since the days when Pierreroamed the very fields where these tales take place. It should neverbe forgotten that British Columbia has a climate like that of England, where, on the Coast, it is never colder than here, and where there israin instead of snow in winter. 

There is much humour and good nature in the West, and this also I triedto bring out in these two books; and Askatoon is as cosmopolitan asLondon. Canada in the West has all races, and it was consistent of me togive a Chinaman of noble birth a part to play in the tragicomedy. Ihave a great respect for the Chinaman, and he is a good servant and afaithful friend. Such a Chinaman as Li Choo I knew in British Columbia, and all I did was to throw him on the Eastern side of the Rockies, a fewmiles from the border of the farthest Western province. The Chinaman'sdeath was faithful in its detail, and it was true to his nature. He hadto die, and with the old pagan philosophy, still practised in Chinaand Japan, he chose the better way, to his mind. Princes still destroythemselves in old Japan, as recent history proves. 

YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK

PROEM

Have you ever seen it in reaping-time? A sea of gold it is, with gentlebillows telling of sleep and not of storm, which, like regiments afoot, salute the reaper and say, "All is fulfilled in the light of the sun andthe way of the earth; let the sharp knife fall. " The countless millionheads are heavy with fruition, and sun glorifies and breeze cradlesthem to the hour of harvest. The air-like the tingle of water from amountain-spring in the throat of the worn wayfarer, bringing a sense ofthe dust of the world flushed away. 

Arcady? Look closely. Like islands in the shining yellow sea, arehouses--sometimes in a clump of trees, sometimes only like bare-backeddomesticity or naked industry in the workfield. Also rising here andthere in the expanse, clouds that wind skyward, spreading out in apowdery mist. They look like the rolling smoke of incense, of sacrifice. Sacrifice it is. The vast steam-threshers are mightily devouring whattheir servants, the monster steam-reapers, have gleaned for them. Soon, when September comes, all that waving sea will be still. What was goldwill still be a rusted gold, but near to the earth-the stubble of thecorn now lying in vast garners by the railway lines, awaiting transporteast and west and south and across the seas. 

Not Arcady this, but a land of industry in the grip of industrialists, whose determination to achieve riches is, in spite of themselves, chastened by the magnitude and orderly process of nature's travail whichis not pain. Here Nature hides her internal striving under a smother ofwhite for many months in every year, when what is now gold in the sunwill be a soft--sometimes, too, a hard-shining coverlet like impactedwool. Then, instead of the majestic clouds of incense from thethreshers, will rise blue spiral wreaths of smoke from the lonely home. There the farmer rests till spring, comforting himself in the thoughtthat while he waits, far under the snow the wheat is slowly expanding;and as in April, the white frost flies out of the soil into the sun, itwill push upward and outward, green and vigorous, greeting his eye withthe "What cheer, partner!" of a mate in the scheme of nature. 

Not Arcady; and yet many of the joys of Arcady are here--bright, singingbirds, wide adventurous rivers, innumerable streams, the squirrel in thewood and the bracken, the wildcat stealing through the undergrowth, the lizard glittering by the stone, the fish leaping in the stream, theplaint of the whippoorwill, the call of the bluebird, the golden flashof the oriole, the honk of the wild geese overhead, the whirr of themallard from the sedge. And, more than all, a human voice declaring byits joy in song that not only God looks upon the world and finds it verygood. 

CHAPTER I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS"

If you had stood on the borders of Askatoon, a prairie town, on thepathway to the Rockies one late August day not many years ago, you wouldhave heard a fresh young human voice singing into the morning, as itspossessor looked, from a coat she was brushing, out over the "field ofthe cloth of gold, " which your eye has already been invited to see. With the gift of singing for joy at all, you should be able to sing veryjoyously at twenty-two. This morning singer was just that age; and ifyou had looked at the golden carpet of wheat stretching for scores ofmiles, before you looked at her, you would have thought her curiously intone with the scene. She was a symphony in gold--nothing less. Her hair, her cheeks, her eyes, her skin, her laugh, her voice they were all gold. Everything about her was so demonstratively golden that you might havehad a suspicion it was made and not born; as though it was unreal, andthe girl herself a proper subject of suspicion. The eyelashes were solong and so black, the eyes were so topaz, the hair was so like such acloud of gold as would be found on Joan of Are as seen by a mediaevalpainter, that an air of faint artificiality surrounded what was in everyother way a remarkable effort of nature to give this region, where shewas so very busy, a keynote. 

Poseurs have said that nature is garish or exaggerated more often thannot; but it is a libel. She is aristocratic to the nth degree, andis never over done; courage she has, but no ostentation. There was, however, just a slight touch of over-emphasis in this singing-girl'spresentation--that you were bound to say, if you considered herquite apart from her place in this nature-scheme. She was not whollyaristocratic; she was lacking in that high, social refinement whichwould have made her gold not so golden, her black eyelashes not soblack. Being unaristocratic is not always a matter of birth, though itmay be a matter of parentage. 

Her parentage was honest and respectable and not exalted. Her father hadbeen an engineer, who had lost his life on a new railway of the West. His widow had received a pension from the company insufficient tomaintain her, and so she kept boarders, the coat of one of whom herdaughter was now brushing as she sang. The widow herself was the originof the girl's slight disqualification for being of that higher circle ofselection which nature arranges long before society makes its judicialdecision. The father had been a man of high intelligence, which hisdaughter to a real degree inherited; but the mother, as kind a soulas ever lived, was a product of southern English rural life--a littlesumptuous, but wholesome, and for her daughter's sake at least, keepingherself well and safely within the moral pale in the midst of markedtemptations. She was forty-five, and it said a good deal for her amplebut proper graces that at forty-five she had numerous admirers. The girlwas English in appearance, with a touch perhaps of Spanish--why, whocan say? Was it because of those Spanish hidalgoes wrecked on the Irishcoast long since? Her mind and her tongue, however, were Irish like herfather's. You would have liked her, everybody did, --yet you would havethought that nature had failed in self-confidence for once, she was sopointedly designed to express the ancient dame's colour-scheme, even tothe delicate auriferous down on her youthful cheek and the purse-proudlook of her faintly retrousse nose; though in fact she never had had apurse and scarcely needed one. In any case she had an ample pocket inher dress. 

This fairly full description of her is given not because she is the mostimportant person in the story, but because the end of the story wouldhave been entirely different had it not been for her; and because sheherself was one of those who are so much the sport of circumstances orchance that they express the full meaning of the title of this story. As a line beneath the title explains, the tale concerns a matrimonialdeserter. Certainly this girl had never deserted matrimony, though shehad on more than one occasion avoided it; and there had been men meanand low enough to imagine they might allure her to the conditions ofmatrimony without its status. 

As with her mother the advertisement of her appearance was whollymisleading. A man had once said to her that "she looked too gay to begood, " but in all essentials she was as good as she was gay, and indeedrather better. Her mother had not kept boarders for seven years withoutgetting some useful knowledge of the world, or without imparting usefulknowledge; and there were men who, having paid their bills on demand, turned from her wiser if not better men. Because they had pursued theold but inglorious profession of hunting tame things, Mrs. Tyndall Tynanhad exacted compensation in one way or another--by extras, by occasionaland deliberate omission of table luxuries, and by making them pay fortheir own mending, which she herself only did when her boarders behavedthemselves well. She scored in any contest--in spite of her rather smallbrain, large heart, and ardent appearance. A very clever, shiftlessIrish husband had made her develop shrewdness, and she was so busywatching and fending her daughter that she did not need to watch andfend herself to the same extent as she would have done had she been freeand childless and thirty. The widow Tynan was practical, and she sawnone of those things which made her daughter stand for minutes at a timeand look into the distance over the prairie towards the sunset light orthe grey-blue foothills. She never sang--she had never sung a note inher life; but this girl of hers, with a man's coat in her hand, and eyeson the joyous scene before her, was for ever humming or singing. Shehad even sung in the church choir till she declined to do so any longer, because strangers stared at her so; which goes to show that she was notso vain as people of her colouring sometimes are. It was just as bad, however, when she sat in the congregation; for then, too, if she sang, people stared at her. So it was that she seldom went to church at all;but it was not because of this that her ideas of right and wrong werequite individual and not conventional, as the tale of the matrimonialdeserter will show. 

This was not church, however, and briskly applying a light whisk-broomto the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her whenhe was in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fairproportion of the time. It used to perplex her the thrilling buoyancyand the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but asa child she had become so inured to it that she was not surprised at thealternate pensive gaiety and the blazing exhilaration of the particularman whose coat she now dusted long after there remained a speck of dustupon it. This was the song she sang:

 "Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? Hereaway I waited him, hereaway and oft; When I sang my song to him, bright his eyes began to shine-- Hereaway I loved him well, for my heart was soft. 

 "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'"

 "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown-- Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. 

 "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'"

There was a plaintive quality in the voice of this russet maiden inperfect keeping with the music and the words; and though her lipssmiled, there was a deep, wistful look in her eyes more in harmony withthe coming autumn than with this gorgeous harvest-time. 

For a moment after she had finished singing she stood motionless, absorbed by the far horizon; then suddenly she gave a little shake ofthe body and said in a brisk, playfully chiding way:

"Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" There was no one near, so far as eye could see, so it was clear that the words were addressedto herself. She was expressing that wonder which so many people feelat discovering in themselves long-concealed characteristics, or findthemselves doing things out of their natural orbit, as they think. Ifany one had told Kitty Tynan that she had rare imagination, she wouldhave wondered what was meant. If anyone had said to her, "What are youdreaming about, Kitty?" she would have understood, however, for she hadhad fits of dreaming ever since she was a child, and they had increasedduring the past few years--since the man came to live with them whosecoat she was brushing. Perhaps this was only imitation, because theman had a habit of standing or sitting still and looking into space forminutes--and on Sundays for hours--at a time; and often she had watchedhim as he lay on his back in the long grass, head on a hillock, hatdown over his eyes, while the smoke from his pipe came curling up frombeneath the rim. Also she had seen him more than once sitting with aletter before him and gazing at it for many minutes together. She hadalso noted that it was the same letter on each occasion; that it was aclosed letter, and also that it was unstamped. She knew that, becauseshe had seen it in his desk--the desk once belonging to her father, asloping thing with a green-baize top. Sometimes he kept it locked, butvery often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to gethim something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly becauseher moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, shehad examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman'shandwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned thecoat--and the letter. The name on the envelope was Shiel Crozier, butthe name of the man who owned the coat was J. G. Kerry--James GathorneKerry, so he said. 

Kitty Tynan had certainly enough imagination to make her cherish amystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything elsehad she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; butshe felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made upfifty stories which she thought would fit the case of J. G. Kerry, whofor over four years had lived in her mother's house. He had become partof her life, perhaps just because he was a man, --and what home is areal home without a man?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness;indeed, he showed in his manner occasionally almost a boisteroushilarity. He undoubtedly was what her mother called "a queer dick, " butalso "a pippin with a perfect core, " which was her way of saying thathe was a man to be trusted with herself and with her daughter; one whowould stand loyally by a friend or a woman. He had stood by them bothwhen Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer, who had boarded with them whenJ. G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded the bounds of liberalfriendliness which marked the household, and by furtive attempts atintimacy began to make life impossible for both mother and daughter. Burlingame took it into his head, when he received notice that his roomswere needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry was the cause of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry had seen Kitty Tynanangrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her waist, and had usedcutting and decisive words to the sensualist afterwards. 

There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--JesseBulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for threedays together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorousfellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty andadroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenientfor harmless deceit. He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and, as a wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time beforehe showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse namedEgan who also lodged with Mrs. Tynan; though even a plain-faced nursein uniform has an advantage over a handsome unprofessional woman. JesseBulrush and J. G. Kerry were friends--became indeed such confidentialfriends to all appearance, though their social origin was evidentlyso different, that Kitty Tynan, when she wished to have a pleasantconversation which gave her a glow for hours afterwards, talked to thefat man of his lean and aristocratic-looking friend. 

"Got his head where it ought to be--on his shoulders; and it ain'tfor playing football with, " was the frequent remark of Mr. Bulrushconcerning Mr. Kerry. This always made Kitty Tynan want to sing, shecould not have told why, save that it seemed to her the equivalent of along history of the man whose past lay in mists that never lifted, andwhom even the inquisitive Burlingame had been unable to "discover" whenhe lived in the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singingas a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous andbecoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creatureof contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voiceit was she. She looked a soprano. 

What she was thinking of as she sang with Kerry's coat in her handit would be hard to discover by the process of elimination, as thedetectives say when tracking down a criminal. It is, however, of noconsequence; but it was clear that the song she sang had moved her, for there was the glint of a tear in her eye as she turned towards thehouse, the words of the lyric singing themselves over in her brain:

 "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the hearth, heaven stood there in the skies' Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?"'

She knew that no lover had left her; that none was in the habit oflaying his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she hadsaid aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"Perhaps--and perhaps not. 

As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within thehouse, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the lookin her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the doorway--afigure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying girl. 

"Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullientmoods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; myspotless coat in a spotted world, --the unbelievable anomaly--

 "'For the earth of a dusty to-day Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow. '"

When he talked like this she did not understand him, but she thoughtit was clever beyond thinking--a heavenly jumble. "If it wasn't for meyou'd be carted for rubbish, " she replied joyously as she helped him onwith his coat, though he had made a motion to take it from her. 

"I heard you singing--what was it?" he asked cheerily, while it couldbe seen that his mind was preoccupied. The song she had sung, floatingthrough the air, had seemed familiar to him, while he had been greatlyengaged with a big business thing he had been planning for a longtime, with Jesse Bulrush in the background or foreground, as scout orrear-guard or what you will:

 "'Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? Hereaway, I waited him, hereaway and oft--'"

she hummed with an exaggerated gaiety in her voice, for the song hadsaddened her, she knew not why. At the words the flaming exhilaration ofthe man's face vanished and his eyes took on a poignant, distant look. 

"That--oh, that!" he said, and with a little jerk of the head and aclenching of the hand he moved towards the street. 

"Your hat!" she called after him, and ran inside the house. An instantlater she gave it to him. Now his face was clear and his eyes smiledkindly at her. 

"'Whereaway, hereaway' is a wonderful song, " he said. "We used to singit when I was a boy--and after, and after. It's an old song--old as thehills. Well, thanks, Kitty Tynan. What a girl you are--to be so kind toa fellow like--me!"

"Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"--these were the very words she hadused about herself a little while before. The song--why did it makeMr. Kerry take on such a queer look all at once when he heard it? Kittywatched him striding down the street into the town. 

Now a voice--a rich, quizzical, kindly voice-called out to her:

"Come, come, Miss Tynan, I want to be helped on with my coat, " it said. 

Inside the house a fat, awkward man was struggling, or pretending tostruggle, into his coat. 

"Roll into it, Mr. Rolypoly, " she answered cheerily as she entered. 

"Of course I'm not the star boarder--nothing for me!" he said inaffected protest. 

"A little more to starboard and you'll get it on, " she retorted witha glint of her late father's raillery, and she gave the coat a twitchwhich put it right on the ample shoulders. 

"Bully! bully!" he cried. "I'll give you the tip for the Askatoon cup. "

"I'm a Christian. I hate horse-racers and gamblers, " she returnedmockingly. 

"I'll turn Christian--I want to be loved, " he bleated from the doorway. 

"Roll on, proud porpoise!" she rejoined, which shows that herconversation was not quite aristocratic at all times. 

"Golly, but she's a gold dollar in a gold bank, " remarked Jesse Bulrushwarmly as he lurched into the street. 

The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking dreamily down theway the two men had gone. 

The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her. She heard the dizzy dinof the bees, the sleepy grinding of the grass hoppers, the sough ofthe solitary pine at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing, machine-like sound. This particular sound went on and on. 

She opened the door of the next room. Her mother sat at a sewing-machineintent upon some work, the needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth. 

"What are you making, mother?" Kitty asked. "New blinds for Mr. Kerry'sbedroom-he likes this green colour, " the widow added with a slightflush, due to leaning over the sewing-machine, no doubt. 

"Everybody does everything for him, " remarked the girl almost pettishly. 

"That's a nice spirit, I must say!" replied her mother reprovingly, themachine almost stopping. 

"If I said it in a different way it would be all right, " the otherreturned with a smile, and she repeated the words with a winning softinflection, like a born actress. 

"Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" declared her mother, and shebent smiling over the machine, which presently buzzed on its devouringway. Three people had said the same thing within a few minutes. A lookof pleasure stole over the girl's face, and her bosom rose and fell witha happy sigh. Somehow it was quite a wonderful day for her. 

CHAPTER II. CLOSING THE DOORS

There are many people who, in some subtle psychological way, are verylike their names; as though some one had whispered to "the parents ofthis child" the name designed for it from the beginning of time. So itwas with Shiel Crozier. Does not the name suggest a man lean and flat, sinewy, angular and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco's picturesin the Prado at Madrid? Does not the name suggest a figure of elongatedhumanity with a touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of thefantastical humour of Don Quixote?

In outward appearance Shiel Crozier, otherwise J. G. Kerry, of Askatoon, was like his name for the greater part of the time. Take him inrepose, and he looked a lank ascetic who dreamed of a happy land whereflagellation was a joy and pain a panacea. In action, however, as whenKitty Tynan helped him on with his coat, he was a pure improvisationof nature. He had a face with a Cromwellian mole, which broke out inemotion like an April day, with eyes changing from a blue-grey to thedeepest ultramarine that ever delighted the soul and made the reputationof an Old Master. Even in the prairie town of Askatoon, where every manis so busy that he scarcely knows his own children when he meets them, and almost requires an introduction to his wife when the door closes onthem at bedtime, people took a second look at him when he passed. Manywho came in much direct contact with him, as Augustus Burlingame thelawyer had done, tried to draw from him all there was to tell abouthimself; which is a friendly custom of the far West. The native-borngreatly desire to tell about themselves. They wear their hearts on theirsleeves, and are childlike in the frank recitals of all they were andare and hope to be. This covers up also a good deal of business acumen, shrewdness, and secretiveness which is not so childlike and bland. 

In this they are in sharp contrast to those not native-born. Thesecome from many places on the earth, and they are seldom garrulouslyhistorical. Some of them go to the prairie country to forget they everlived before, and to begin the world again, having been hurt in lifeundeservingly; some go to bury their mistakes or worse in pioneer workand adventure; some flee from a wrath that would devour them--the law, society, or a woman. 

This much must be said at once for Crozier, that he had no crime tohide. It was not because of crime that "He buckles up his talk like thebellyband on a broncho, " as Malachi Deely, the exile from Tralee, saidof him; and Deely was a man of "horse-sense, " no doubt because he was ahorse-doctor--"a veterenny surgeon, " as his friends called him when theywished to flatter him. Deely supplemented this chaste remark about thebroncho with the observation that, "Same as the broncho, you buckle himtightest when you know the divil is stirring in his underbrush. " And headded further, "'Tis a woman that's put the mumplaster on his tongue, Sibley, and I bet you a hundred it's another man's wife. "

Like many a speculator, Malachi Deely would have made no profit out ofhis bet in the end, for Shiel Crozier had had no trouble with the law, or with another man's wife, nor yet with any single maid--not yet;though there was now Kitty Tynan in his path. Yet he had had trouble. There was hint of it in his occasional profound abstraction; but morethan all else in the fact that here he was, a gentleman, having livedhis life for over four years past as a sort of horse-expert, overseer, and stud-manager for Terry Brennan, the absentee millionaire. In theopinion of the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind ofoccupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune. 

"Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame, " saidMalachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gamblingyoung farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling andfarming. 

"Words to him are like nuts to a monkey. He's an artist, that man is. Been in the circles where the band plays good and soft, where the musicsmells--fairly smells like parfumery, " responded Sibley. "I'd like toget at the bottom of him. There's a real good story under his asbestosvest--something that'd make a man call for the oh-be-joyful, same as Ido now. "

After they had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler Deelycontinued the gossip. "Watch me now, been a friend of dukes inEngland--and Ireland, that Mr. James Gathorne Kerry, as any one can see;and there he is feelin' the hocks of a filly or openin' the jaws of astud horse, age-hunting! Why, you needn't tell me--I've had my mind madeup ever since the day he broke the temper of Terry Brennan's Inniskillenchestnut, and won the gold cup with her afterwards. He just sort ofappeared out of the mist of the marnin', there bein' a divil's lot ofexcursions and conferences and holy gatherin's in Askatoon that timeback, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like theDioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was theirbluff; but they'd come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thingbefore all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which everinfested the West. Come--he come like that!"--Deely made a motion likea swoop of an aeroplane to earth--"and here he is buckin' about like arough-neck same as you and me; but yet a gent, a swell, a cream dellacream, that's turned his back on a lady--a lady not his own wife, that'smy sure and sacred belief. "

"You certainly have got women on the brain, " retorted Sibley. "I ain'tever seen such a man as you. There never was a woman crossing the streeton a muddy day that you didn't sprint to get a look at her ankles. Behind everything you see a woman. Horses is your profession, but womanis your practice. "

"There ain't but one thing worth livin' for, and that's a woman, "remarked Deely. 

"Do you tell Mrs. Deely that?" asked Sibley. 

"Watch me now, she knows. What woman is there don't know when herhusband is what he is! And it's how I know that the trouble with JamesGathorne Kerry is a woman. I know the signs. Divils me own, he's got 'emin his face. "

"He's got in his face what don't belong here and what you don't knowmuch about--never having kept company with that sort, " rejoined Sibley. 

"The way he lives and talks--'No, thank you, I don't care for anything, ' says he, when you're standin' at the door of a friendly saloon, which is established by law to bespeak peace and goodwill towards men, and you ask him pleasant to step inside. He don't seem to have a singlevice. Haven't we tried him? There was Belle Bingley, all frizzy hair anda kicker; we put her on to him. But he give her ten dollars to buy a haton condition she behaved like a lady in the future--smilin' at her, thedivil! And Belle, with temper like dinnemite, took it kneelin' as itwere, and smiled back at him--her! Drink, women--nothin' seems to have ahold on him. What's his vice? Sure, then, that's what I say, what's hisvice? He's got to have one; any man as is a man has to have one vice. "

"Bosh! Look at me, " rejoined Sibley. "Drink women--nit! Not for me! I'vegot no vice. I don't even smoke. "

"No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--whatdo you call gamblin'? It's the biggest vice ever tuk grip of a man. It'slike a fever, and it's got you, John, like the nail on your finger. "

"Well, p'r'aps, he's got that vice too. P'r'aps J. G. Kerry's got thatvice same as me. "

"Anyhow, we'll get to know all we want when he goes into the witnessbox at the Logan murder trial next week. That's what I'm waitin' for, "Deely returned, with a grin of anticipation. "That drug-eating GusBurlingame's got a grudge against him somehow, and when a lawyer's gota grudge against you it's just as well to look where y' are goin'. Burlingame don't care what he does to get his way in court. What set himagainst Kerry I ain't sure, but, bedad, I think it's looks. Burlingamegoes in for lookin' like a picture in a frame--gold seals hangin' beyanthis vestpocket, broad silk cord to his eye-glass, loose flowin' tie, and long hair-makes him look pretentuous and showy. But your 'Mr. Kerry, sir, ' he don't have any tricks to make him look like a doge from Veenisand all the eyes of the females battin' where'er he goes. Jealousy, JohnSibley, me boy, is a cruil thing. "

"Why is it you ain't jealous of him? There's plenty of women thatwatch you go down-town--you got a name for it, anyway, " remarked Sibleymaliciously. 

Deely nodded sagely. "Watch me now, that's right, me boy. I got a namefor it, but I want the game without the name, and that's why I ain'tputtin' on any airs--none at all. I depend on me tongue, not on melooks, which goes against me. I like Mr. J. G. Kerry. I've plentydealin's with him, naturally, both of us being in the horse business, and I say he's right as a minted dollar as he goes now. Also, andbehold, I'd take my oath he never done anything to blush for. Histouble's been a woman--wayward woman what stoops to folly! I give uptryin' to pump him just as soon as I made up my mind it was a woman. That shuts a man's mouth like a poor-box. 

"Next week's fixed for the Logan killin' case, is it?"

"Monday comin', for sure. I wouldn't like to be in Mr. Kerry's shoes. Watch me now, if he gives the evidence they say he can give--theprasecution say it--that M'Mahon Gang behind Logan 'll get him sure asguns, one way or another. "

"Some one ought to give Mr. Kerry the tip to get out and not giveevidence, " remarked Sibley sagely. Deely shook his head vigorously. "Begobs, he's had the tip all right, but he's not goin'. He's got asmuch fear as a canary has whiskers. He doesn't want to give evidence, he says, but he wants to see the law do its work. Burlingame 'll try tomake it out manslaughter; but there's a widow with children to sufferfor the manslaughter, just as much as though it was murder, and thereisn't a man that doesn't think murder was the game, and the grand jooryhad that idea too. 

"Between Gus Burlingame and that M'Mahon bunch of horse-thieves, the stranger in a strange land 'll have to keep his eyes open, I'mthinkin'. "

"Divils me darlin', his eyes are open all right, " returned Deely. 

"Still, I'd like to jog his elbow, " Sibley answered reflectively. "Itcouldn't do any harm, and it might do good. "

Deely nodded good-naturedly. "If you want to so bad as that, John, you've got the chance, for he's up at the Sovereign Bank now. I seenhim leave the Great Overland Railway Bureau ten minutes ago and get awayquick to the bank. "

"What's he got on at the bank and the railway?"

"Some big deal, I guess. I've seen him with Studd Bradley. "

"The Great North Trust Company boss?"

"On it, my boy, on it--the other day as thick as thieves. Studd Bradleydoesn't knit up with an outsider from the old country unless there'sreason for it--good gold-currency reasons. "

"A land deal, eh?" ventured Sibley. "What did I say--speculation, that's his vice, same as mine! P'r'aps that's what ruined him. Cards, speculation, what's the difference? And he's got a quiet look, same asme. "

Deely laughed loudly. "And bursts out same as you! Quiet one hour likea mill-pond or a well, and then--swhish, he's blazin'! He's a volcano inharness, that spalpeen. "

"He's a volcano that doesn't erupt when there's danger, " respondedSibley. "It's when there's just fun on that his volcano gets loose. I'llgo wait for him at the bank. I got a fellow-feeling for Mr. Kerry. I'dlike to whisper in his ear that he'd better be lookin' sharp for theM'Mahon Gang, and that if he's a man of peace he'd best take a holidaytill after next week, or get smallpox or something. "

The two friends lounged slowly up the street, and presently parted nearthe door of the bank. As Sibley waited, his attention was drawn to awindow on the opposite side of the street at an angle from themselves. The light was such that the room was revealed to its farthest corners, and Sibley noted that three men were evidently carefully watching thebank, and that one of the men was Studd Bradley, the so-called boss. Theothers were local men of some position commercially and financially inthe town. Sibley did not give any sign that he noticed the three men, but he watched carefully from under the rim of his hat. His imagination, however, read a story of consequence in the secretive vigilance of thethree, who evidently thought that, standing far back in the room, theycould not be seen. 

Presently the door of the bank opened, and Sibley saw Studd Bradley leanforward eagerly, then draw back and speak hurriedly to his companions, using a gesture of satisfaction. 

"Something damn funny there!" Sibley said to himself, and steppedforward to Crozier with a friendly exclamation. Crozier turned ratherimpatiently, for his face was aflame with some exciting reflection. Atthis moment his eyes were the deepest blue that could be imagined--analmost impossible colour, like that of the Mediterranean when itreflects the perfect sapphire of the sky. There was something almostwonderful in their expression. A woman once said as she looked at apicture of Herschel, whose eyes had the unworldly gaze of the greatdreamer looking beyond this sphere, "The stars startled him. " Such alook was in Crozier's eyes now, as though he was seeing the bright endof a long road, the desire of his soul. 

That, indeed, was what he saw. After two years of secret negotiationhe had (inspired by information dropped by Jesse Bulrush, hisfellow-boarder) made definite arrangements for a big land-deal inconnection with the route of a new railway and a town-site, which wouldmean more to him than any one could know. If it went through, he would, for an investment of ten thousand dollars, have a hundred and fiftythousand dollars; and that would solve an everlasting problem for him. 

He had reached a critical point in his enterprise. All that was wantednow was ten thousand dollars in cash to enable him to close the greatbargain and make his hundred and fifty thousand. But to want tenthousand dollars and to get it in a given space of time, when you haveneither securities, cash, nor real estate, is enough to keep you awakeat night. Crozier had been so busy with the delicate and difficultnegotiations that he had not deeply concerned himself with the absenceof the necessary ten thousand dollars. He thought he could get themoney at any time, so good was the proposition; and it was best to deferraising it to the last moment lest some one learning the secret shouldforestall him. He must first have the stake to be played for beforehe moved to get the cash with which to make the throw. This is notgenerally thought a good way, but it was his way, and it had yet to betested. 

There was no cloud of apprehension, however, in Crozier's eyes as theymet those of Sibley. He liked Sibley. At this point it is not necessaryto say why. The reason will appear in due time. Sibley's face had alwayssomething of that immobility and gravity which Crozier's face had partof the time-paler, less intelligent, with dark lines and secretshadows absent from Crozier's face; but still with some of the El Grecocharacteristics which marked so powerfully that of the man who passed asJ. G. Kerry. 

"Ah, Sibley, " he said, "glad to see you! Anything I can do for you?"

"It's the other way if there's any doing at all, " was the quickresponse. 

"Well, let's walk along together, " remarked Crozier a littleabstractedly, for he was thinking hard about his great enterprise. 

"We might be seen, " said Sibley, with an obvious undermeaning meant toprovoke a question. 

Crozier caught the undertone of suggestion. "Being about to burgle thebank, it's well not to be seen together--eh?"

"No, I'm not in on that business, Mr. Kerry. I'm for breaking banks, notburgling 'em, " was the cheerful reply. 

They laughed, but Crozier knew that the observant gambling farmer wasnot talking at haphazard. They had met on the highway, as it were, manytimes since Crozier had come to Askatoon, and Crozier knew his man. 

"Well, what are we going to do, and who will see us if we do it?"Crozier asked briskly. 

"Studd Bradley and his secret-service corps have got their eyes on thisstreet--and on you, " returned Sibley dryly. 

Crozier's face sobered and his eyes became less emotional. "I don't seethem anywhere, " he answered, but looking nowhere. 

"They're in Gus Burlingame's office. They had you under observationwhile you were in the bank. "

"I couldn't run off with the land, could I?" Crozier remarked dryly, yetsuggestively, in his desire to see how much Sibley knew. 

"Well, you said it was a bank. I've no more idea what it is you'retryin' to run off with than I know what an ace is goin' to do whenthere's a joker in the pack, " remarked Sibley; "but I thought I'd tellyou that Bradley and his lot are watchin' you gettin' ready to run. "Then he hastily told what he had seen. 

Crozier was reassured. It was natural that Bradley & Co. Should take aninterest in his movements. They would make a pile of money if he pulledoff the deal-far more than he would. It was not strange that they shouldwatch his invasion of the bank. They knew he wanted money, and a bankwas the place to get it. That was the way he viewed the matter on theinstant. He replied to Sibley cheerfully. "A hundred to one is a lotwhen you win it, " he said enigmatically. 

"It depends on how much you have on, " was Sibley's quiet reply--"adollar or a thousand dollars. 

"If you've got a big thing on, and you've got an outsider that you thinkis goin' to win and beat the favourite, it's just as well to run norisks. Believe me, Mr. Kerry, if you've got anything on that asks foryour attention, it'd be sense and saving if you didn't give evidence atthe Logan Trial next week. It's pretty well-guessed what you're goin' tosay and what you know, and you take it from me, the M'Mahon mob that'sbehind Logan 'll have it in for you. They're terrors when they getgoin', and if your evidence puts one of that lot away, ther'll betrouble for you. I wouldn't do it--honest, I wouldn't. I've been outWest here a good many years, and I know the place and the people. It'sa good place, and there's lots of first-class people here, but there'sa few offscourings that hang like wolves on the edge of the sheepfold, ready to murder and git. "

"That was what you wanted to see me about, wasn't it?" Crozier askedquietly. 

"Yes; the other was just a shot on the chance. I don't like to see mensneakin' about and watching. If they do, you can bet there's somethingwrong. But the other thing, the Logan Trial business, is a deadcertainty. You're only a new-comer, in a kind of way, and you don'tneed to have the same responsibility as the rest. The Law'll get what itwants whether you chip in or not. Let it alone. What's the Law ever donefor you that you should run risks for it? It's straight talk, Mr. Kerry. Have a cancer in the bowels next week or go off to see a dyin' brother, but don't give evidence at the Logan Trial--don't do it. I got afeeling--I'm superstitious--all sportsmen are. By following my instinctsI've saved myself a whole lot in my time. "

"Yes; all men that run chances have their superstitions, and they'renot to be sneered at, " replied Crozier thoughtfully. "If you see black, don't play white; if you see a chestnut crumpled up, put your moneyon the bay even when the chestnut is a favourite. Of course you'resuperstitious, Sibley. The tan and the green baize are covered withghosts that want to help you, if you'll let them. "

Sibley's mouth opened in amazement. Crozier was speaking with the lookof the man who hypnotises himself, who "sees things, " who dreams as onlythe gambler and the plunger on the turf do dream, not even excepting thelatter-day Irish poets. 

"Say, I was right what I said to Deely--I was right, " remarked Sibleyalmost huskily, for it seemed to him as though he had found a long-lostbrother. No man except one who had staked all he had again and againcould have looked or spoken like that. 

Crozier looked at the other thoughtfully for a moment, then he said:

"I don't know what you said to Deely, but I do know that I'm going tothe Logan Trial in spite of the M'Mahon mob. I don't feel about it asyou do. I've got a different feeling, Sibley. I'll play the game out. I shall not hedge. I shall not play for safety. It's everything on thefavourite this time. "

"You'll excuse me, but Gus Burlingame is for the defence, and he's gothis knife into you, " returned Sibley. 

"Not yet. " Crozier smiled sardonically. 

"Well, I apologise, but what I've said, Mr. Kerry, is said as man toman. You're ridin' game in a tough place, as any man has to do whostarts with only his pants and his head on. That's the way you begunhere, I guess; and I don't want to see your horse tumble because someone throws a fence-rail at its legs. Your class has enemies always in anew country--jealousy, envy. "

The lean, aristocratic, angular Crozier, with a musing look on his longface, grown ascetic again, as he held out his hand and gripped that ofthe other, said warmly: "I'm just as much obliged to you as though Itook your advice, Sibley. I am not taking it, but I am taking a pledgeto return the compliment to you if ever I get the chance. "

"Well, most men get chances of that kind, " was the gratified reply ofthe gambling farmer, and then Crozier turned quickly and entered thedoorway of the British Bank, the rival of that from which he had turnedin brave disappointment a little while before. 

Left alone in the street, Sibley looked back with the instinct of thehunter. As he expected, he saw a head thrust out from the window whereStudd Bradley and his friends had been. There was an hotel opposite theBritish Bank. He entered and waited. Bradley and one of his companionspresently came in and seated themselves far back in the shadow, wherethey could watch the doorway of the bank. 

It was quite a half-hour before Shiel Crozier emerged from the bank. Hisface was set and pale. For an instant he stood as though wondering whichway to go, then he moved up the street the way he had come. 

Sibley heard a low, poisonous laugh of triumph rankle through thehotel office. He turned round. Bradley, the over-fed, over-confident, over-estimated financier, laid a hand on the shoulder of his companionas they moved towards the door. 

"That's another gate shut, " he said. "I guess we can close 'em all witha little care. It's working all right. He's got no chance of raising thecash, " he added, as the two passed the chair where Sibley sat--with hishat over his eyes, chewing an unlighted cigar. 

"I don't know what it is, but it's dirt--and muck at that, " John Sibleyremarked as he rose from his chair and followed the two into the street. 

Bradley and his friends were trying steadily to close up the avenues ofcredit to the man to whom the success of his enterprise meant so much. To crowd him out would mean an extra hundred and fifty thousand dollarsfor themselves. 

CHAPTER III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT

What the case was in which Shiel Crozier was to give evidence is notimportant; what came from the giving of his testimony is all thatmatters; and this story would never have been written if he had notentered the witness-box. 

A court-room at any time seems a little warmer than any other spotto all except the prisoner; but on a July day it is likely to be apunishment for both innocent and guilty. A man had been killed by oneof the group of toughs called locally the M'Mahon Gang, and against thecharge of murder that of manslaughter had been set up in defence; andmanslaughter might mean jail for a year or two or no jail at all. Anyevidence which justified the charge of murder would mean not jail, butthe rope in due course; for this was not Montana or Idaho, where thelaw's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed. 

The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation, for the M'Mahonswere detested, and the murdered man had a good reputation in thedistrict. Besides, a widow and three children mourned their loss, andthe widow was in court. Also Crozier's evidence was expected to besensational, and to prove the swivel on which the fate of the accusedman would hang. Among those on the inside it was also known that theclever but dissipated Augustus Burlingame, the counsel for the prisoner, had a grudge against Crozier, --no one quite knew why except Kitty Tynanand her mother, and that cross-examination would be pressed mercilesslywhen Crozier entered the witness-box. As Burlingame came into thecourt-room he said to the Young Doctor--he was always spoken of as theYoung Doctor in Askatoon, though he had been there a good many yearsand he was no longer as young as he looked--who was also called as awitness, "We'll know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry when this trial is overthan will suit his book. " It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame thatin Crozier, who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuousMrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre withbaffling qualities and some gift of riposte. 

Crozier entered the witness-box at a stage when excitement was at feverheight; for the M'Mahon Gang had given evidence which every one believedto be perjured; and the widow of the slain man was weeping bitterly inher seat because of noxious falsehoods sworn against her honest husband. 

There was certainly something credible and prepossessing in the look ofCrozier. He might be this or that, but he carried no evil or vice ofcharacter in his face. He was in his grave mood this summer afternoon. There he stood with his long face and the very heavy eyebrows, clean-shaven, hard-bitten, as though by wind and weather, composedand forceful, the mole on his chin a kind of challenge to thevertical dimple in his cheek, his high forehead more benevolent thanintellectual, his brown hair faintly sprinkled with grey and a bitunmanageable, his fathomless eyes shining. "No man ought to have sucheyes, " remarked a woman present to the Young Doctor, who abstractedlynodded assent, for, like Malachi Deely and John Sibley, he himself had atheory about Crozier; and he had a fear of what the savage enmity of themorally diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that sointense a scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoonhad behind it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; andthat view was supported by the stern economy of Crozier's daily life, broken only by sudden bursts of generosity for those in need. 

In the box Crozier kept his eye on the crown attorney, who prosecuted, and on the judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room, though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if helooked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he toldhis story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words whichmade every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his gravemood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of hisown creation, when he was almost wildly vivid with life. 

"He's two men, " she had often said to herself; and she said it nowas she looked at him in the witness-box, measuring out his words andmeasuring off at the same time the span of a murderer's life; forwhen the crown attorney said to the judge that he had concluded hisexamination there was no one in the room--not even the gracelessBurlingame--who did not think the prisoner guilty. 

"That is all, " the crown attorney said to Crozier as he sank into hischair, greatly pleased with one of the best witnesses who had ever beenthrough his hands--lucid, concentrated, exact, knowing just where hewas going and reaching his goal without meandering. Crozier was about tostep down when Burlingame rose. 

"I wish to ask a few questions, " he said. 

Crozier bowed and turned, again grasping the rail of the witness-boxwith one hand, while with an air of cogitation and suspense he strokedhis chin with the long fingers of the other hand. 

"What is your name?" asked Burlingame in a tone a little louder thanhe had used hitherto in the trial, indeed even louder than lawyersgenerally use when they want to bully a witness. In this case it was asthough he wished to summon the attention of the court. 

For a second Crozier's fingers caught his chin almost spasmodically. Thereal meaning of the question, what lay behind it, flashed to his mind. He saw in lightning illumination the course Burlingame meant to pursue. For a moment his heart seemed to stand still, and he turned slightlypale, but the blue of his eyes took on a new steely look--a look alsoof striking watchfulness, as of an animal conscious of its danger, yetconscious too of its power when at bay. 

"What is your name?" Burlingame asked again in a somewhat louder tone, and turned to look at the jury, as if bidding them note the hesitationof the witness; though, indeed, the waiting was so slight that none buta trickster like Burlingame would have taken advantage of it, and onlythen when there was much behind. 

For a moment longer Crozier remained silent, getting strength, as itwere, and saying to himself, "What does he know?" and then, with acomposed look of inquiry at the judge, who appeared to take no notice, he said: "I have already, in evidence, given my name to the court. "

"Witness, what is your name?" again almost shouted the lawyer, with anote of indignation in his voice, as though here was a dangerous fellowcommitting a misdemeanour in their very presence. He spread out hishands to the jury, as though bidding them observe, if they would, thiswitness hesitating in answer to a simple, primary question--a witnesswho had just sworn a man's life away!

"What is your name?"

"James Gathorne Kerry, as I have already given it to the court, " was thecalm reply. 

"Where do you live?"

"In Askatoon, as I have already said in evidence; and if it is necessaryto give my domicile, I live at the house of Mrs. Tyndall Tynan, PearlStreet--as you know so well. "

The tone in which he uttered the last few words was such that even thejudge pricked up his ears. 

A look of hatred came into the decadent but able lawyer's face. 

"Where do you live when you are at home?"

"Mrs. Tynan's house is the only home I have at present. "

He was outwitting the pursuer so far, but it only gained him time, as heknew; and he knew also that no suggestive hint concerning the episode atMrs. Tynan's, when Burlingame was asked to leave her house, would be ofany avail now. 

"Where were you born?"

"In Ireland. "

"What part of Ireland?"

"County Kerry. "

"What place--what town or city or village in County Kerry?"

"In neither. "

"What house, then--what estate?" Burlingame was more than nettled; andhe sharpened his sword. 

"The estate of Castlegarry. "

"What was your name in Ireland?"

In the short silence that followed, the quick-drawn breath of manyexcited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter wereMrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who heldtheir breath in suspense were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loudin the hush, and the scratching of the judge's quill pen was noisilyirritating. 

"My name in Ireland was James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, commonly calledShiel Crozier, " came the even reply from the witness-box. 

"James Shiel Gathorne Crozier in Ireland, but James Gathorne Kerryhere!" Burlingame turned to the jury significantly. "What other namehave you been known by in or out of Ireland?" he added sharply toCrozier. "No other name so far as I know. "

"No other name so far as you know, " repeated the lawyer in a sarcastictone intended to impress the court. 

"Who was your father?"

"John Gathorne Crozier. "

"Any title?"

"He was a baronet. "

"What was his business?"

"He had no profession, though he had business, of course. "

"Ah, he lived by his wits?"

"No, he was not a lawyer! I have said he had no profession. He lived onhis money on his estate. "

The judge waved down the laughter at Burlingame's expense. 

"In official documents what was his description?" snarled Burlingame. 

"'Gentleman' was his designation in official documents. "

"You, then, were the son of a gentleman?" There was a hateful suggestionin the tone. 

"I was. "

"A legitimate son?"

Nothing in Crozier's face showed what he felt, except his eyes, and theyhad a look in them which might well have made his questioner shrink. Heturned calmly to the judge. 

"Your honour, does this bear upon the case? Must I answer this legallibertine?"

At the word libertine, the judge, the whole court, and the audiencestarted; but it was presently clear the witness meant that thequestioner was abusing his legal privileges, though the people presentinterpreted it another way, and quite rightly. 

The reply of the judge was in favour of the lawyer. "I do not quite seethe full significance of the line of defence, but I think I must allowthe question, " was the judge's gentle and reluctant reply, for hewas greatly impressed by this witness, by his transparent honesty andstraightforwardness. 

"Were you a legitimate son of John Gathorne Crozier and his wife?" askedBurlingame. 

"Yes, a legitimate son, " answered Crozier in an even voice. 

"Is John Gathorne Crozier still living?"

"I said that gentleman was his designation in official documents. Isupposed that would convey the fact that he was not living, but I seeyou do not quickly grasp a point. "

Burlingame was stung by the laughter in the court and ventured ariposte. 

"But is once a gentleman always a gentleman an infallible rule?"

"I suppose not; I did not mean to convey that; but once a rogue always abad lawyer holds good in every country, " was Crozier's comment in a low, quiet voice which stirred and amused the audience again. 

"I must ask counsel to put questions which have some relevance even tohis own line of defence, " remarked the judge sternly. "This is not acorner grocery. "

Burlingame bowed. He had had a facer, but he had also shown the witnessto have been living under an assumed name. That was a good start. He hoped to add to the discredit. He had absolutely no knowledge ofCrozier's origin and past; but he was in a position to find it out ifCrozier told the truth on oath, and he was sure he would. 

"Where was your domicile in the old country?" Burlingame asked. 

"In County Kerry--with a flat in London. "

"An estate in County Kerry?"

"A house and two thousand acres. "

"Is it your property still?"

"It is not. "

"You sold it?"

"No. "

"If you did not sell, how is it that you do not own it?"

"It was sold for me--in spite of me. "

The judge smiled, the people smiled, the jury smiled. Truly, though alife-history was being exposed with incredible slowness--"like pullingteeth, " as the Young Doctor said--it was being touched off withlaughter. 

"You were in debt?"

"Quite. "

"How did you get into debt?"

"By spending more than my income. "

If Askatoon had been proud of its legal talent in the past it had nowreason for revising its opinion. Burlingame was frittering away theeffect of his inquiry by elaboration of details. What he gained by themain startling fact he lost in the details by which the witness scored. He asked another main question. 

"Why did you leave Ireland?"

"To make money. "

"You couldn't do it there?"

"They were too many for me over there, so I thought I'd come here, "slyly answered Crozier, and with a grave face; at which the solemn sceneof a prisoner being tried for his life was shaken by a broad smiling, which in some cases became laughter haughtily suppressed by the courtattendant. 

"Have you made money here?"

"A little--with expectations. "

"What was your income in Ireland?"

"It began with three thousand pounds--"

"Fifteen thousand dollars about?"

"About that--about a lawyer's fee for one whisper to a client less thanthat. It began with that and ended with nothing. "

"Then you escaped?"

"From creditors, lawyers, and other such? No, I found you here. "

The judge intervened again almost harshly on the laughter of the court, with the remark that a man was being tried for his life; that ribaldrywas out of place; and that, unless the course pursued by the counselwas to discredit the reliability of the character of the witness, theexamination was in excess of the privilege of counsel. 

"Your honour has rightly apprehended what my purpose is, " Burlingamesaid deprecatingly. He then turned to Crozier again, and his voicerose as it did when he began the examination. It was as though he wasstarting all over again. 

"What was it compelled" (he was boldly venturing) "you to leave Irelandat last? What was the incident which drove you out from the land whereyou were born--from being the owner of two thousand acres"--

"Partly bog, " interposed Crozier. 

"--From being the owner of two thousand acres to becoming a kind ofhead-groom on a ranch? What was the cause of your flight?"

"Flight! I came in one of the steamers of the Company for which yourfirm are the agents. Eleven days it took to come from Glasgow toQuebec. "

Again the court rippled, again the attendant intervened. 

Burlingame was nonplussed this time, but he gathered himself together. 

"What was the process of law which forced you to leave your own land?"

"None at all. "

"What were your debts when you left?"

"None at all. "

"How much was the last debt you paid?"

"Two thousand five hundred pounds. "

"What was its nature?"

"It was a debt of honour--do you understand?" The subtle challenge ofthe voice, the sarcasm, was not lost. Again there was a struggle on thepart of the audience not to laugh outright, and so be driven from thecourt as had been threatened. 

The judge interposed again with the remark, not very severe in tone, that the witness was not in the box to ask questions, but to answerthem. At the same time he must remind counsel that the examination mustdiscontinue unless something more relevant immediately appeared in theevidence. 

There was silence again for a moment, and even Crozier himself seemed tosteel himself for a question he felt was coming. 

"Are you married or single?" asked Burlingame, and he did not need toraise his voice to summon the interest of the court. 

"I was married. "

One person in the audience nearly cried out. It was Kitty Tynan. Shehad never allowed herself to think of that, but even if she had, whatdifference could it make whether he was married or single, since he wasout of her star?

"Are you not married now?"

"I do not know. "

"You mean you do not know if you have been divorced?"

"No. "

"You mean your wife is dead?"

"No. "

"What do you mean? That you do not know whether your wife is living ordead?"

"Quite so. "

"Have you heard from her since you saw her last?"

"I had one letter. "

Kitty Tynan thought of the unopened letter in a woman's handwriting inthe green baize desk in her mother's house. 

"No more?"

"No more. "

"Are we to understand that you do not know whether your wife is livingor dead?"

"I have no information that she is dead. "

"Why did you leave her?"

"I have not said that I left her. Primarily I left Ireland. "

"Assuming that she is alive, your wife will not live with you?"

"Ah, what information have you to that effect?" The judge informedCrozier that he must not ask questions of counsel. 

"Why is she not with you here?"

"As you said, I am only picking up a living here, and even the passageby your own second-class steamship line is expensive. "

The judge suppressed a smile. He greatly liked the witness. 

"Do you deny that you parted from your wife in anger?"

"When I am asked that question I will try to answer it. Meanwhile, I donot deny what has not been put before me in the usual way. "

Here the judge sternly rebuked the counsel, who ventured upon one lastquestion. 

"Have you any children?"

"None. "

"Has your brother, who inherited, any children?"

"None that I know of. "

"Are you the heir-presumptive to the baronetcy?"

"I am. "

"Yet your wife will not live with you?"

"Call Mrs. Crozier as a witness and see. Meanwhile, I am not upon mytrial. "

He turned to the judge, who promptly called upon Burlingame to concludehis examination. 

Burlingame asked two questions more. 

"Why did you change your name when you came here?"

"I wanted to obliterate myself. "

"I put it to you, that what you want is to avoid the outraged law ofyour own country. "

"No--I want to avoid the outrageous lawyers of yours. "

Again there was a pause in the proceedings, and on a protest from thecrown attorney the judge put an end to the cross-examination with thesolemn reminder that a man was being tried for his life, and that thepresent proceedings were a lamentable reflection on the levity of humannature--in Askatoon. Turning with friendly scrutiny to Crozier, he said:

"In the early stage of his examination the witness informed the courtthat he had made a heavy loss through a debt of honour immediatelybefore leaving England. Will he say in what way he incurred theobligation? Are we to assume that it was through gambling-card-playing, or other games of chance?"

"Through backing the wrong horse, " was Crozier's instant reply. 

"That phrase is often applied to mining or other unreal flights forfortune, " said the judge, with a dry smile. 

"This was a real horse on a real flight to the winning-post, " addedCrozier, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth. 

"Honest contest with man or horse is no crime, but it is tragedy tostake all on the contest and lose, " was the judge's grave and pedagogiccomment. "We shall now hear from the counsel for defence his reason forconducting his cross-examination on such unusual lines. Latitude of thiskind is only permissible if it opens up any weakness in the case againstthe prisoner. "

The judge thus did Burlingame a good turn as well as Crozier, bycreating an atmosphere of gravity, even of tragedy, in which Burlingamecould make his speech in defence of the prisoner. 

Burlingame started hesitatingly, got into his stride, assembled thepoints of his defence with the skill of which he really was capable. Hemade a strong appeal for acquittal, but if not acquittal, then a verdictof manslaughter. He showed that the only real evidence which couldconvict his man of murder was that of the witness Crozier. If he hadbeen content to discredit evidence of the witness by an adroit butguarded misuse of the facts he had brought out regarding Crozier's past, to emphasise the fact that he was living under an assumed name and thathis bona fides was doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to someslight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and hewas smarting from Crozier's retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated, and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack. He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every oratorknows when he is beating the air, even when his audience is quiet andapparently attentive. 

The crown attorney was a man of the serenest method and of cold, unforensic logic. He had a deadly precision of speech, a very remarkablememory, and a great power of organising and assembling his facts. Therewas little left of Burlingame's appeal when he sat down. He declaredthat to discredit Crozier's evidence because he chose to use anothername than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he leftEngland practically penniless to earn an honest living--no one hadshown it was not--was the last resort of legal desperation. It wasan indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a manbecause of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one singleword of evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save byCrozier's own word of mouth; and if Crozier had cared to commit perjury, the defence could not have proved him guilty of it. Even if Crozier hadnot told the truth as it was, counsel for the defence would have foundit impossible to convict him of falsehood. But even if Crozier was aperjurer, justice demanded that his evidence should be weighed as truthfrom its own inherent probability and supported by surrounding facts. In a long experience he had never seen animus against a witness sorecklessly exhibited as by counsel in this case. 

The judge was not quite so severe in his summing up, but he did say ofCrozier that his direct replies to Burlingame's questions, intendedto prejudice him in the eyes of the community into which he had come astranger, bore undoubted evidence of truth; for if he had chosen to saywhat might have saved him from the suspicions, ill or well founded, ofhis present fellow-citizens, he might have done so with impunity, savefor the reproach of his own conscience. On the whole, the judge summedup powerfully against the prisoner Logan, with the result that the jurywere not out for more than a half-hour. Their verdict was, guilty ofmurder. 

In the scene which followed, Crozier dropped his head into his hand andsat immovable as the judge put on the black cap and delivered sentence. When the prisoner left the dock, and the crowd began to disperse, satisfied that justice had been done--save in that small circle wherethe M'Mahons were supreme--Crozier rose with other witnesses to leave. As he looked ahead of him the first face he saw was that of Kitty Tynan, and something in it startled him. Where had he seen that look before?Yes, he remembered. It was when he was twenty-one and had been sent awayto Algiers because he was falling in love with a farmer's daughter. Ashe drove down a lane with his father towards the railway station, thoselong years ago, he had seen the girl's face looking at him from thewindow of a labourer's cottage at the crossroads; and its stupefieddesolation haunted him for many years, even after the girl had marriedand gone to live in Scotland--that place of torment for an Irish soul. 

The look in Kitty Tynan's face reminded him of that farmer's lass in hisboyhood's history. He was to blame then--was he to blame now? Certainlynot consciously, not by any intended word or act. Now he met her eyesand smiled at her, not gaily, not gravely, but with a kind of whimsicalhelplessness; for she was the first to remind him that he was leavingthe court-room in a different position (if not a different man) fromthat in which he entered it. He had entered the court-room as JamesGathorne Kerry, and he was leaving it as Shiel Crozier; and somehowJames Gathorne Kerry had always been to himself a different manfrom Shiel Crozier, with different views, different feelings, if notdifferent characteristics. 

He saw faces turned to him, a few with intense curiosity, fewerstill with a little furtiveness, some with amusement, and many withunmistakable approval; for one thing was clear, if his own evidencewas correct: he was the son of a baronet, he was heir-presumptive toa baronetcy, and he had scored off Augustus Burlingame in a way whichdelighted a naturally humorous people. He noted, however, that the nodwhich Studd Bradley, the financier, gave him had in it an enigmaticsomething which puzzled him. Surely Bradley could not be prejudicedagainst him because of the evidence he had given. There was nothingcriminal in living under an assumed name, which, anyhow, was his ownname in three-fourths of it, and in the other part was the name of thecounty where he was born. 

"Divils me own, I told you he was up among the dukes, " said MalachiDeely to John Sibley as they came out. "And he's from me own county, andI know the name well enough; an' a damn good name it is. The bulls ofCastlegarry was famous in the south of Ireland. "

"I've a warm spot for him. I was right, you see. Backing horses ruinedhim, " said Sibley in reply; and he looked at Crozier admiringly. 

There is the communion of saints, but nearer and dearer is the communionof sinners; for a common danger is their bond, and that is even morethan a common hope. 

CHAPTER IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE"

On the evening of the day of the trial, Mrs. Tynan, having fixed thenew blind to the window of Shiel Crozier's room, which was on theground-floor front, was lowering and raising it to see if it workedproperly, when out in the moonlit street she saw a wagon approaching herhouse surrounded and followed by obviously excited men. Once before shehad seen just such a group nearing her door. That was when her husbandwas brought home to die in her arms. She had a sudden conviction, as, holding the blind in her hand, she looked out into the night, that againtragedy was to cross her threshold. Standing for an instant underthe fascination of terror, she recovered herself with a shiver, and, stepping down from the chair where she had been fixing the blind, withthe instinct of real woman, she ran to the bed of the room where shewas, and made it ready. Why did she feel that it was Shiel Crozier's bedwhich should be made ready? Or did she not feel it? Was it only a dazed, automatic act, not connected with the person who was to lie in the bed?Was she then a fatalist? Were trouble and sorrow so much her portionthat to her mind this tragedy, whatever it was, must touch the mannearest to her--and certainly Shiel Crozier was far nearer than JesseBulrush. Quite apart from wealth or position, personality plays a partmore powerful than all else in the eyes of every woman who has a soulwhich has substance enough to exist at all. Such men as Crozier havecompensations for "whate'er they lack. " It never occurred to Mrs. Tynanto go to Jesse Bulrush's room or the room of middle-aged, comely NurseEgan. She did the instinctive thing, as did the woman who sent a man arope as a gift, on the ground that the fortune in his hand said that hewas born not to be drowned. 

Mrs. Tynan's instinct was right. By the time she had put the bed intoshape, got a bowl of water ready, lighted a lamp, and drawn the bed outfrom the wall, there was a knocking at the door. In a moment she hadopened it, and was faced by John Sibley, whose hat was off as thoughhe were in the presence of death. This gave her a shock, and her eyesstrove painfully to see the figure which was being borne feet foremostover her threshold. 

"It's Mr. Crozier?" she asked. 

"He was shot coming home here--by the M'Mahon mob, I guess, " returnedSibley huskily. 

"Is--is he dead?" she asked tremblingly. "No. Hurt bad. "

"The kindest man--it'd break Kitty's heart--and mine, " she addedhastily, for she might be misunderstood; and John Sibley had shown signsof interest in her daughter. 

"Where's the Young Doctor?" she asked, catching sight of Crozier's faceas they laid him on the bed. "He's done the first aid, and he's offgetting what's needed for the operation. He'll be here in a minute orso, " said a banker who, a few days before, had refused Crozier credit. 

"Gently, gently--don't do it that way, " said Mrs. Tynan in sharp reproofas they began to take off Crozier's clothes. 

"Are you going to stay while we do it?" asked a maker of mineral waters, who whined at the prayer meetings of a soul saved and roared at hisemployees like a soul damned. 

"Oh, don't be a fool!" was the impatient reply. "I've a grown-up girland I've had a husband. Don't pull at his vest like that. Go away. Youdon't know how. I've had experience--my husband. .. There, wait tillI cut it away with the scissors. Cover him with the quilt. Now, then, catch hold of his trousers under the quilt, and draw them off slowly. .. . There you are--and nothing to shock the modesty of a grown-up woman orany other when a life's at stake. What does the Young Doctor say?"

"Hush! He's coming to, " interposed the banker. It was as though thequiet that followed the removal of his clothes and the touch of Mrs. Tynan's hand on his head had called Crozier back from unconsciousness. 

The first face he saw was that of the banker. In spite of the loss ofblood and his pitiable condition, a whimsical expression came to hiseyes. "Lucky for you you didn't lend me the money, " he said feebly. 

The banker shook his head. "I'm not thinking of that, Mr. Crozier. Godknows, I'm not!"

Crozier caught sight of Mrs. Tynan. "It's hard on you to have me broughthere, " he murmured as she took his hand. 

"Not so hard as if they hadn't, " she replied. "That's what a home'sfor--not just a place for eating and drinking and sleeping. "

"It wasn't part of the bargain, " he said weakly. 

"It was my part of the bargain. "

"Here's Kitty, " said the maker of mineral waters, as there was the swishof a skirt at the door. 

"Who are you calling 'Kitty'?" asked the girl indignantly, as theymotioned her back from the bedside. "There's too many people here, "she added abruptly to her mother. "We can take care of him"--she noddedtowards the bed. "We don't want any help except--except from JohnSibley, if he will stay, and you too, " she added to the banker. 

She had not yet looked at the figure on the bed. She felt she could notdo so while all these people were in the room. She needed time to adjustherself to the situation. It was as though she was the authority in thehousehold and took control even of her mother. Mrs. Tynan understood. She had a great belief in her daughter and admired her cleverness, andshe was always ready to be ruled by her; it was like being "bossed" bythe man she had lost. 

"Yes, you'd all better go, " Mrs. Tynan said. "He wants all the air hecan get, and I can't make things ready with all of you in the room. Gooutdoors for a while, anyway. It's summer and you'll not take cold! TheYoung Doctor has work to do, and my girl and I and these two will helphim plenty. " She motioned towards the banker and the gambling farmer. 

In a moment the room was cleared of all save the four and Crozier, who knew that upon the coming operation depended his life. He had beenconscious when the Young Doctor said this was so, and he was thinking, as he lay there watching these two women out of his nearly closed eyes, that he would like to be back in Ireland at Castlegarry with the girl hehad married and had left without a good-bye near five years gone. If hehad to die he would like to die at home; and that could not be. 

Kitty had the courage to turn towards him now. As she caught sightof his face for the first time--she had so far kept her head turnedaway--she became very pale. Then, suddenly, she gathered herselftogether. Going over to the bed, she took the limp hand lying on thecoverlet. 

"Courage, soldier, " she said in the colloquialism her father often used, and she smiled at Crozier a great-hearted, helpful smile. 

"You are a brick of bricks, Kitty Tynan, " he whispered, and smiled. 

"Here comes the Young Doctor, " said Mrs. Tynan as the door openedunceremoniously. 

"Well, I have to make an excursion, " Crozier said, "and I mayn't comeback. If I don't, au revoir, Kitty. "

"You are coming back all right, " she answered firmly. "It'll take morethan a horse-thief's bullet to kill you. You've got to come back. You'reas tough as nails. And I'll hold your hand all through it--yes, I will!"she added to the Young Doctor, who had patted her shoulder and told herto go to another room. 

"I'm going to help you, doctor-man, if you please, " she said, as heturned to the box of instruments which his assistant held. 

"There's another--one of my colleagues--coming I hope, " the Young Doctorreplied. 

"That's all right, but I am staying to see Mr. Crozier through. I saidI'd hold his hand, and I'm going to do it, " she added firmly. 

"Very well; put on a big apron, and see that you go through with us ifyou start. No nonsense. "

"There'll be no nonsense from me, " she answered quietly. 

"I want the bed in the middle of the room, " the Young Doctor said, andthe others gently moved it. 

CHAPTER V. A STORY TO BE TOLD

A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never nervous whenperforming an operation, though there was sometimes a moment when everyresource of character, skill, and brain came into play. That was when, having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and unexpected seat oftrouble and peril was exposed, and instant action had to be taken. Thegreat man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with it coolly; buthe paid the price afterwards in his sleep when, night after night, heperformed the operation over and over again with the same strain on hissubconscious self. 

So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way. She had insisted on beingallowed to help at the operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a goodknowledge of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so far asthe operation was concerned she justified his faith in her. When thebanker had to leave the room at the sight of the carnage, she remained, and she and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor and hisfellow-anatomist, till it was all over, and Shiel Crozier was startedagain on a safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would havebeen amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and JohnSibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and thereaction seized them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burstinto tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and theysat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like twochildren. 

"Never since I was a little runt--did I--never cried in thirtyyears--and here I am-leaking like a pail!" Thus spoke John Sibleyin gasps and squeezing Kitty's hand all the time unconsciously, butspontaneously, and as part of what he felt. He would not, however, havedared to hold her hand on any other occasion, while always wanting tohold it, and wanting her also to share his not wholly reputed, thoughfar from precarious, existence. He had never got so far as to tell herthat; but if she had understanding she would realise after to-night whathe had in his mind. She, feeling her arm thrill with the magnetism ofhis very vital palm, had her turn at explanation. "I wouldn't have brokedown myself--it was all your fault, " she said. "I saw it--yes--in yourface as we left the house. I'm so glad it's over safe--no one belongingto him here, and not knowing if he'd wake up alive or not--I just wasswamped. "

He took up the misty excuse and explanation. "I had a feeling for himfrom the start; and then that Logan Trial to-day, and the way he talkedout straight, and told the truth to shame the devil--it's what does aman good! And going bung over a horserace--that's what got me too, whereI was young and tender. Swatted that Burlingame every time--one eye, two eyes all black, teeth out, nose flattened--called him an'outrageous lawyer'--my, that last clip was a good one! You bet he's asport--Crozier. "

Kitty nodded eagerly while still wiping her red eyes. "He made the judgesmile--I saw it, not ten minutes before his honour put on the black cap. You couldn't have believed it, if you hadn't seen it--

"Here, let go my hand, " she added, suddenly conscious of the enormityJohn Sibley was committing by squeezing it now. 

It is perfectly true that she did not quite realise that he had takenher hand--that he had taken her hand. She was conscious in a nice, sympathetic way that her hand had been taken, but it was lost in theabstraction of her emotion. 

"Oh, here, let it go quick!" she added--"and not because mother'scoming, either, " she added as the door opened and her mother cameout--not to spy, not to reproach her daughter for sitting with a manin the moonlight at ten o'clock at night, but--good, practical soul--tobring them each a cup of beef-tea. 

"Here, you two, " she said as she hurried to them. "You need somethingafter that business in there, and there isn't time to get supper ready. It's as good for you as supper, anyway. I don't believe in underfeeding. Nothing's too good to swallow. "

She watched them sip the tea slowly like two schoolchildren. 

"And when you've drunk it you must go right to bed, Kitty, " she addedpresently. "You've had your own way, and you saw the thing through; butthere's always a reaction, and you'll pay for it. It wasn't fit work fora girl of your age; but I'm proud of your nerve, and I'm glad you showedthe Young Doctor what you can do. You've got your father's brains andmy grit, " she added with a sigh of satisfaction. "Come along--bed now, Kitty. If you get too tired you'll have bad dreams. "

Perhaps she was too tired. In any case she had dreams. Just as the greatsurgeon performed his operation over and over in his sleep, so KittyTynan, through long hours that night, and for many nights afterwards, saw the swift knives, helped to staunch the blood, held the basin, disinfected the instruments which had made an attack on the man of menin her eyes, and saw the wound stitched up--the last act of the businessbefore the Young Doctor turned to her and said, "You'll do whereveryou're put in life, Miss Kitty Tynan. You're a great girl. And now getsome fresh air and forget all about it. "

Forget all about it! So, the Young Doctor knew what happened after aterrific experience like that! In truth, he knew only too well. Greatsurgeons do surgery only and have innumerable operations to give themskill; but a country physician and surgeon must be a sane being to keephis nerve when called on to use the knife, and he must have a more thanusual gift for such business. That is what the Young Doctor had; but heknew it was not easy to forget those scenes in which man carved the bodyof fellow-man, laying bare the very vitals of existence, seeing "thewheels go round. "

It haunted Kitty Tynan in the night-time, and perhaps it was that whichtoned down a little the colour of her face--the kind of difference ofcolouring there is between natural gold and 14-carat. But in the daytimeshe was quite happy, and though there was haunting, it was Shiel Crozierwho, first helpless, then convalescent, was haunted by her presence. Itgave him pleasure, but it was a pleasure which brought pain. He wasnot so blind that he had not caught at her romance, in which he wasthe central figure--a romance which had not vanished since the day hedeclared in the court-room that he was married, or had been married. Kitty's eyes told their own story, and it made him uneasy andremorseful. Yet he could not remember when, even for an instant, he hadplayed with her. She had always seemed part of a simple family life forwhich he and Jesse Bulrush and her mother and the nurse-Nurse Egan-wereresponsible. What a blessing Nurse Egan had been! Otherwise, all thenursing would have been performed by Kitty and her mother, and itmight well have broken them down, for they were determined to nurse himthemselves. 

When, however, Nurse Egan came back, two days after the operationwas performed, they included her in the responsibility, as one ofthe family; and as she had no other important case on at the time, fortunately she could give Crozier almost undivided attention. She hadbeen at first disposed to keep Kitty out of the sick-chamber, as noplace for a girl, but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty wasnot the girl ever to think of impropriety. She was primitive and she hadrather a before-the-flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgarstrain in her. Her mind was essentially pure; nothing material in herhad been awakened. Her greatest joy was to do the many things for thepatient which a nurse must do--prepare his food, give him drink, adjusthis pillows, bathe his face and hands, take his temperature; and on hispart he tried hard to disguise from her the apprehension he felt, and toavoid any hint by word or look that he saw anything save the actions ofa kind heart. True, her views as to what was proper and improper mightpossibly be on a different plane from his own. For instance, he had seengirls of her station in the West kiss young men freely--men whom theyhad no thought of marrying; and that was not the custom of his own classin his home-country. 

As he got well slowly, and life opened out before him again, he felt hehad to pursue a new course, and in that course he must take account ofKitty Tynan, though he could not decide how. He had a deep confidence inthe Young Doctor, in his judgment and his character; and it was almostinevitable that he should tell his life-story to the man whose skill hadsaved him from death in a strange land, with all undone he wanted to doere he returned to a land which was not strange. 

The thing happened, as such things do happen, in a quite natural way oneday when he and the Young Doctor were discussing the probable verdictagainst the man who had shot him--the trial was to come on soon, andonce again Augustus Burlingame was to be counsel for the defence, andonce again Crozier would have to appear in a witness-box. 

"I think you ought to know, Crozier, that, in view of the trial, Burlingame has written to a firm of lawyers in Kerry to get fullinformation about your past, " the Young Doctor said. 

Crozier gave one of those little jerks of the head characteristic ofhim and said: "Why, of course; I knew he would do that after I gave myevidence in the Logan Trial. " He raised himself on his elbow. "I oweyou a great deal, " he added feelingly, "and I can't repay you in cash orkindness for what you have done; but it is due you to tell you my wholestory, and that is what I propose to do now. "

"If you think--"

"I do think; and also I want both Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hearmy story. Better, truer friends a man could not have; and I want them toknow the worst and the best there is, if there is any best. They and youhave trusted me, been too good to me, and what I said at the trial isnot enough. I want to do what I've never done before. I want to telleverything. It will do me good; and perhaps as I tell it I'll see myselfand everything else in a truer light than I've yet seen it all. "

"You are sure you want Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear?"

"Absolutely sure. "

"They are not in your rank in life, you know. "

"They are my friends, and I owe them more than I can say. There isnothing they cannot or should not hear. I can say that at least. "

"Shall I ask them to come?"

"Yes. Give me a swig of water first. It won't be easy, but--"

He held out his hand, and the Young Doctor grasped it. 

Suddenly the latter said: "You are sure you will not be sorry? That itis not a mood of the moment due to physical weakness?"

"Quite sure. I determined on it the day I was shot--and before I wasshot. "

"All right. " The Young Doctor disappeared. 

CHAPTER VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON"

The stillness of a summer's day in Prairie Land has all thecharacteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. Theeffect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses, a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to merepulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that regionof sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds thatsprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of thepervasive music of somnolent nature--the sough of the pine at the door, the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresherout of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynanas, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a lifeas distant from that which she lived as she was from Eve. 

She felt more awed than curious as the tale went on; it even seemed toher she was listening to a theme beyond her sphere, like some shamelesseavesdropper at the curtains of a secret ceremonial. Once or twice shelooked at her mother and at the Young Doctor, as though to reassureherself that she was not a vulgar intruder. It was far more impressiveto her, and to the Young Doctor too, than the scene at the Logan Trialwhen a man was sentenced to death. It was strangely magnetic, thistale of a man's existence; and the clock which sounded so loud on themantelpiece, as it mechanically ticked off the time, seemed only partof some mysterious machinery of life. Once a dove swept down upon thewindow-sill, and, peering in, filled one of the pauses in the recitalwith its deep contralto note, and then fled like a small blue cloud intothe wide and--as it seemed--everlasting peace beyond the doorway. 

There was nothing at all between themselves and the far sky-line savelittle clumps of trees here and there, little clusters of buildings andhouses--no visible animal life. Everything conspired to give a dignityin keeping with the drama of failure being unfolded in the commonplacehome of the widow Tynan. Yet the home too had its dignity. The engineerfather had had tastes, and he had insisted on plain, unfigured curtainsand wallpaper and carpets, when carpets were used; and though his wifehad at first protested against the unfigured carpets as more difficultto keep clean and as showing the dirt too easily, she had come to likethe one-colour scheme, and in that respect her home had an individualityrare in her surroundings. 

That was why Kitty Tynan had always a good background; for what herbright colouring would have been in the midst of gaudy, cheap chintzesand "Axminsters, " such as abounded in Askatoon, is better left to theimagination. It was not, therefore, in sordid, mean, or incongruoussurroundings that Crozier told his tale; as would no doubt have beenarranged by a dramatist, if he had had the making and the setting of thestory; and if it were not a true tale told just as it happened. 

Perhaps the tale was the more impressive because of Crozier's deepbaritone voice, capable, as it was, of much modulation, yet, exceptwhen he was excited, having a slight monotone like the note of a violinwith the mute upon the strings. 

This was his tale:

"Well, to begin with, I was born at Castlegarry, in Kerry--you know themain facts from what I said in court. As a boy I wasn't so bad a sort. I had one peculiarity. I always wanted 'to have something on, ' as JohnSibley would say. No matter what it was, I must have something on it. And I was very lucky--worse luck!"

They all laughed at the bull. "I feel at home at once, " murmured theYoung Doctor, for he had come from near Enniskillen years agone, andthere is not so much difference between Enniskillen and Kerry when itcomes to Irish bulls. 

"Worse luck, it was, " continued Crozier, "because it made me confidentof always winning. It's hard to say how early I began to believe I couldsee things that were going to happen. By the hour I used to shake thedice on the billiard-table at Castlegarry, trying to see with my eyesshut the numbers about to come up. Of course now and then I saw theright numbers; and it deepened the conviction that if I cultivatedthe gift I'd be able to be right nearly every time. When I went to ahorse-race I used to fasten my mind on the signal, and tried to seebeforehand the number of the winner. Again sometimes I was very rightindeed, and that deepened my confidence in myself. I was always at it. I'd try and guess--try and see--the number of the hymn which was on thepaper in the vicar's hand before he gave it out, and I would bet withmyself on it. I would bet with myself or with anybody available on anyconceivable thing--the minutes late a train would be; the pints ofmilk a cow would give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; thebabies that would be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in apeck of raw potatoes. I was out against the universe. But it wasn'tserious at all--just a boy's mania--till one day my father met me inLondon when I came down from Oxford, and took me to Thwaite's Clubin St. James's Street. There was the thing that finished me. I wastwenty-one, and restless-minded, and with eyes wide open. 

"Well, he took me to Thwaite's where I was to become a member, andafter a little while he left me to go and have a long pow-wow with thecommittee--he was a member of it. He told me to make myself at home, and I did so as soon as his back was turned. Almost the first thing withwhich I became sociable was a book which, at my first sight of it, had afascination for me. The binding was very old, and the leather was worn, as you will see the leather of a pocketbook, till it looks and feelslike a nice soap. That book brought me here. "

He paused, and in the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milkand brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were ina state of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as thoughhypnotised, and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while thewidow knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she couldknit very fast indeed. 

"It was the betting-book of Thwaite's, and it dated back almost to thetime of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago--neara hundred and fifty years ago-had put down their bets in the book, forThwaite's was then what it is now, the highest and best sporting club inthe world. "

Kitty Tynan's face had a curious look, for there was a club in Askatoon, and it was said that all the "sports" assembled there. She had no ideawhat Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street would look like; but that didnot matter. She supposed it must be as big as the Askatoon Court Houseat least. 

"Bets--bets--bets by men whose names were in every history, and thenames of their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons; and all bettingon the oddest things as well as the most natural things in the world. Some of the bets made were as mad as the bets I made myself. Oh!ridiculous, some of them were; and then again bets on things thatstirred the world to the centre, from the loss of America to thebeheading of Louis XVI. 

"It was strange enough to see the half-dozen lines of a bet by a marquiswhose great-grandson bet on the Franco-German War; that the Governmentwhich imposed the tea-tax in America would be out of power within sixmonths; or that the French Canadians would join the colonists in what isnow the United States if they revolted. This would be cheek-by-jowl witha bet that an heir would be born to one new-married pair before anotherpair. The very last bet made on the day I opened the book was that QueenVictoria would make Lord Salisbury a duke, that a certain gentlemanknown as S. S. Could find his own door in St. James's Square, blindfold, from the club, and that Corsair would win the Derby. 

"For two long hours I sat forgetful of everything around me, while Iread that record--to me the most interesting the world could show. Everyline was part of the history of the country, a part of the history ofmany lives, and it was all part of the ritual of the temple of the greatgod Chance. I was fascinated, lost in a land of wonders. Men came andwent, but silently. At last there entered a gentleman whose picture Ihad so often seen in the papers--a man as well known in the sportingworld as was Chamberlain in the political world. He was dressedspectacularly, but his face oozed good-nature, though his eyes were likebright bits of coal. He bred horses, he raced this, he backed that, helaid against the other; he was one of the greatest plungers, one of thebiggest figures on the turf. He had been a kind of god to me--a god ina grey frock-coat, with a grey top-hat and field-glasses slung overhis shoulder; or in a hunting-suit of the most picturesque kind--greatpockets in a well-fitting coat, splendid striped waistcoat. Well, there, I only mention this because it played so big a part in bringing me toAskatoon. 

"He came up to the table where I sat in the room with the beautifulAdam's fireplace and the ceiling like an architrave of Valhalla, andsaid, 'Do you mind--for one minute?' and he reached out a hand for thebook. 

"I made way for him, and I suppose admiration showed in my eyes, becauseas he hastily wrote--what a generous scrawl it was!--he said to me, 'Haven't we met somewhere before? I seem to remember your face. 

"Great gentleman, I thought, because it was certain he knew he had neverseen me before, and I was overcome by the reflection that he wishedto be civil in that way to me. 'It's my father's face you remember, Ishould think, ' I answered. 'He is a member here. I am only a visitor. I haven't been elected yet. ' 'Ah, we must see to that!' he said witha smile, and laid a hand on my shoulder as though he'd known me many ayear--and I only twenty-one. 'Who is your father?' he asked. When I toldhim he nodded. 'Yes, yes, I know him--Crozier of Castlegarry; but I knewhis father far better, though he was so much older than me, and indeedyour grandfather also. Look--in this book is the first bet I evermade here after my election to the club, and it was made with yourgrandfather. There's no age in the kingdom of sport, dear lad, ' headded, laughing--'neither age nor sex nor position nor place. It's theone democratic thing in the modern world. It's a republic insidethis old monarchy of ours. Look, here it is, my first bet with yourgrandfather--and I'm only sixty now!' He smoothed the page with his handin a manner such as I have seen a dean do with his sermon-paper in acathedral puplit. 'Here it is, thirty-six years ago. ' He read the betaloud. It was on the Derby, he himself having bet that the Prince ofWale's horse would win. 'Your grandfather, dear lad, ' he repeated, 'butyou'll find no bets of mine with your father. He didn't inheritthat strain, but your grandfather and your great-grandfather hadit--sportsmen both, afraid of nothing, with big minds, great eyes forseeing, and a sense for a winner almost uncanny. Have you got it by anychance? Yes, yes, by George and by John, I see you have; you are yourgrandfather to a hair! His portrait is here in the club--in the nextroom. Have a look at it. He was only forty when it was done, and you'revery like him; the cut of the jib is there. ' He took my hand. 'Good-bye, dear lad, ' he said; 'we'll meet-yes, we'll meet often enough if youare like your grandfather. And I'll always like to see you, ' he addedgenerously. 

"'I always wanted to meet you, ' I answered. 'I've cut your pictures outof the papers to keep them--at Eton and Oxford. ' He laughed in greatgood-humour and pride. 'So so, so so, and I am a hero then, with onefollower! Well, well, dear lad, I don't often go wrong, or anyhow I'moftener right than wrong, and you might do worse than follow me--but no, I don't want that responsibility. Go on your own--go on your own. '

"A minute more and he was gone with a wave of the hand, and inexcitement I picked up the betting-book. It almost took my breath away. He had staked a thousand pounds that the favourite of the Derby wouldnot win the race, and that one of three outsiders would. As I satoverpowered by the magnitude of the bet the door opened, and he appearedwith another man, not one with whose face I was then familiar, though asa duke and owner of great possessions, he was familiar to society. 'I'veput it down, ' he said. 'Sign it, if it's all in order. ' This the dukedid, after apologizing for disturbing me. He looked at me keenly ashe turned away. 'Not the most elevating literature in the library, 'he said, smiling ironically. 'If you haven't got a taste for it beyondcontrol, don't cultivate it. ' He nodded kindly, and left; and again, till my father came and found me, I buried myself in that book offate--to me. I found many entries in my grandfather's name, but not onein my father's name. I have an idea that when a vice or virtue skipsone generation, it appears with increased violence or persistence in thenext, for, passing over my father into my defenceless breast, the spiritof sport went mad in me--or almost so. No miser ever had a more cheerfuland happy hour than I had as I read the betting-book at Thwaites'. 

"I became a member of Thwaite's soon after I left Oxford. As some men goto the Temple, some to the Stock Exchange, some to Parliament, I went toThwaite's. It was the centre of my interest, and I took chambers in ParkPlace, St. James's Street, a few steps away. Here I met again constantlythe great sportsman who had noticed me so kindly, and I became hisfollower, his disciple. I had started with him on a wave of prejudice inhis favour; because that day when I read in the betting-book what he hadstaked against the favourite, I laid all the cash and credit I couldget with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundredpounds. What he won--to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no usesaying what you think--you kind friends, who've always done somethingin life--that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up tothe turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You mustremember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow marginof succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born inany generation of the family, so that there was always enough for theyounger son or daughter; and to take up a profession was not necessaryfor livelihood. If my mother, who was an intellectual and able woman, had lived, it's hard to tell what I should have become; for steeredaright, given true ideas of what life should mean to a man, I might havebecome ambitious and forged ahead in one direction or another. But thereit was, she died when I was ten, and there was no one to mould me. AtEton, at Oxford-well, they are not preparatory schools to the businessof life. And when at twenty-four I inherited the fortune my mother leftme, I had only one idea: to live the life of a sporting gentleman. I hada name as a cricketer--"

"Ah--I remember, Crozier of Lammis!" interjected the Young Doctorinvoluntarily. "I'm a north of Ireland man, but I remember--"

"Yes, Lammis, " the sick man went on. "Castlegarry was my father's place, but my mother left me Lammis. When I got control of it, and of thesecurities she left, I felt my oats, as they say; and I wasn't long inmaking a show of courage, not to say rashness, in following my leader. He gave me luck for a time, indeed so great that I could even breedhorses of my own. But the luck went against him at last, and then, ofcourse, against me; and I began to feel that suction which, as it drawsthe cash out of your pocket, the credit out of your bank, seems to drawalso the whole internal economy out of your body--a ghastly, empty, collapsing thing. "

Mrs. Tynan gave a great sigh. She had once put two hundred dollars ina mine--on paper--and it ended in a lawsuit; and on the verdict in thelawsuit depended the two hundred dollars and more. When she read afatal telegram to her saying that all was lost, she had had that empty, collapsing feeling. 

Pausing for a moment, in which he sipped some milk, Crozier thencontinued: "At last my leader died, and the see-saw of fortune began forme; and a good deal of my sound timber was sawed into logs and madeinto lumber to build some one else's fortune. When things were balancingpretty easily, I married. It wasn't a sordid business to restore myfortunes--I'll say that for myself; but it wasn't the thing to do, forI wasn't secure in my position. I might go on the rocks; but was thereever a gambler who didn't believe that he'd pull it off in a big waynext time, and that the turn of the wheel against him was only to tamehis spirit? Was there ever a gambler or sportsman of my class who didn'ttalk about the 'law of chances, ' on the basis that if red, as it were, came up three times, black stood a fair chance of coming up the fourthtime? A silly enough conclusion; for on the law of chances there's noreason why red shouldn't come up three hundred times; and so I foundthat your run of bad luck may be so long that you cannot have a chanceto recover, and are out of it before the wheel turns in your favour. Ioughn't to have married. "

His voice had changed in tone, his look become most grave, there wassomething very like reverence in his face, and deprecating submission inhis eyes. His fingers fussed with the rug that covered his knees. 

"God help the man that's afraid of his own wife!" remarked the YoungDoctor to himself, not erroneously reading the expression of Crozier'sface and the tone of his voice. "There's nothing so unnerving. "

"No, I oughtn't to have done it, " Crozier went on. "But I will say againit wasn't a sordid marriage, though she had great expectations, butnot immediate; and she was a girl of great character. She was able andbrilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and she knew her own mind, andwas radiantly handsome. "

Kitty Tynan almost sniffed. Through a whole fortnight she had, with acourage and a right-mindedness quite remarkable, fought her infatuationfor this man, and as she fought she had imagined a hundred times whathis wife was like. She had pictured to herself a gossamer kind of woman, delicate, and in contour like one of the fashion-plate figures she sawin the picture-papers. She had imagined her with a wide, drooping hat, with a soft, clinging gown, and a bodice like a great white handkerchiefcrossed on her breast, holding a basket of flowers, while a King Charlesspaniel gambolled at her feet. 

This was what she had imagined with a kind of awe; but the few wordsCrozier had said of her gave the impression of a Juno, commanding, exacting, bullying, sailing on with this man of men in her wake, who wasafraid of stepping on her train. Was it strange she should thinkthat? She was only a simple prairie girl who drew her own comparisonsaccording to her kind and from what she knew of life. So she imaginedCrozier's wife to have been a sort of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, whoswept up the dust of the universe with her skirts, and gave no chance atall to the children of nature like Kitty, who wore skirts scarcely lowerthan their ankles. She almost sniffed, and she became angry, too, that aman like Crozier, who had faced the offensive Augustus Burlingame inthe witness-box as he did; who took the bullet of the assassin with suchcourage; who broke a horse like a Mexican; who could ride like a leechon a filly's flank, should crumple up at the thought of a woman who, anyhow, couldn't be taller than Crozier himself was, and hadn't a handlike a piece of steel and the skin of an antelope. It was enough to makea cat laugh, or a woman cry with rage. 

"Able and brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and radiantlyhandsome!" There the picture was of a high, haughty, and overbearingwoman, in velvet, or brocade, or poplin-yes, something stiff andoverbearing, like grey poplin. Kitty looked at herself suddenly in themirror-the half-length mirror on the opposite wall--and she felt herhands clench and her bosom beat hard under her pretty and inexpensivecalico frock, a thing for Chloe, not for Juno. 

She was very angry with Crozier, for it was absurd, that look ofdeprecating homage, that "Hush-she-is-coming" in his eyes. What a fool aman was where a woman was concerned! Here she had been fighting herselffor a fortnight to conquer a useless passion for her man of all theworld, fit to command an array of giants; and she saw him now almostbreathless as he spoke of a great wild-cat of a woman who ought to be byhis side now. What sort of a woman was she anyhow, who could let him gointo exile as he had done and live apart from her all these years, while he "slogged away"--that was the Western phrase which came toher mind--to pull himself level with things again? Her feet shuffledunevenly on the floor, and it would have been a joy to shake the invalid there with the rapt look in his face. Unable to bear the situationwithout some demonstration, she got to her feet and caught up the glassof brandy and milk with a little exclamation. 

"Here, " she said, holding the glass to his lips, "here, courage, soldier. You don't need to be afraid at a six-thousand-mile range. "

The Young Doctor started, for she had said what was in his own mind, but what he would not have said for a thousand dollars. It was fortunatethat Crozier was scarcely conscious of what she was saying. His mind wasfar away. Yet, when she took the glass from him again, he touched herarm. 

"Nothing is good enough for your friends, is it?" he said gratefully. 

"That wouldn't be an excuse for not getting them the best there was athand, " she answered with a little laugh, and at least the Young Doctorread the meaning of her words. 

Presently Crozier, with a sigh, continued: "If I had done what my wifewanted from the start, I shouldn't have been here. I'd have saved whatwas left of a fortune, and I'd have had a home of my own. "

"Is she earning her living too?" asked Kitty softly, and Crozier did notnotice the irony under the question. 

"She has a home of her own, " answered Crozier almost sharply. "Justbefore the worst came to the worst she inherited her fortune--plenty ofit, as I got near the end of mine. One thing after another had gone. I was mortgaged up to the eyes. I knew the money-lenders from Newryto Jewry and Jewry to Jerusalem. Then it was I promised her I'd bet nomore--never again: I'd give up the turf; I'd try and start again. Downin my soul I knew I couldn't start again--not just then. But I wantedto please her. She was remarkable in her way; she had one of the mostimposing intelligences I have ever known. So I promised. I promised I'dbet no more. "

The Young Doctor caught Kitty Tynan's eyes by accident, and there wasthe same look of understanding in both. They both knew that here wasthe real tragedy of Crozier's life. If he had had less reverence for hiswife, less of that obvious prostration of soul, he probably would neverhave come to Askatoon. 

"I broke my promise, " he murmured. "It was a horse--well, never mind. I was as sure of Flamingo as that the sun would rise by day and set bynight. It was a certainty; and it was a certainty. The horse could win, it would win; I had it from a sure source. My judgment was right, too. I bet heavily on Flamingo, intending it for my last fling, and, to savewhat I had left, to get back what I had lost. I could get big odds onhim. It was good enough. From what I knew, it was like picking up agold-mine. And I was right, right as could be. There was no chance aboutit. It was being out where the rain fell to get wet. It was just beingpresent when they called the roll of the good people that God wished tobe kind to. It meant so much to me. I couldn't bear to have nothing andmy wife to have all. I simply couldn't stand--"

Again the Young Doctor met the glance of Kitty Tynan, and there was, once more, a new and sudden look of comprehension in the eyes of both. They began to see light where their man was concerned. 

After a moment of struggle to control himself, Crozier proceeded: "Itdidn't seem like betting. Besides, I had planned it, that when I showedher what I had won, she would shut her eyes to the broken promise, andI'd make another, and keep it ever after. I put on all the cash therewas to put on, all I could raise on what was left of my property. "

He paused as though to get strength to continue. Then a look of intenseexcitement suddenly possessed him, and there--passed over him a wave offeeling which transformed him. The naturally grave mediaeval face becamefired, the eyes blazed, the skin shone, the mouth almost trembled withagitation. He was the dreamer, the enthusiast, the fanatic almost, withthat look which the pioneer, the discoverer, the adventurer has when hesees the end of his quest. 

His voice rose, vibrated. "It was a day to make you thank Heaven theworld was made. Such days only come once in a while in England, but whenthey do come, what price Arcady or Askatoon! Never had there been so biga Derby. Everybody had the fever of the place at its worst. I washappy. I meant to pouch my winnings and go straight to my wife and say, 'Peccavi, ' and I should hear her say to me, 'Go and sin no more. ' Yes, I was happy. The sky, the green of the fields, the still, home-like, comforting trees, the mass of glorious colour, the hundreds of horsesthat weren't running and the scores that were to run, sleek and long, and made like shining silk and steel, it all was like heaven on earth tome--a horse-race heaven on earth. There you have the state of my mind inthose days, the kind of man I was. "

Sitting up, he gazed straight in front of him as though he saw EpsomDowns before his eyes; as though he was watching the fateful race thatbore him down. He was terribly, exhaustingly alive. Something possessedhim, and he possessed his hearers. 

"It was just as I said and knew--my horse, Flamingo, stretched awayfrom the rest at Tattenham Corner and came sailing away home two lengthsahead. It was a sight to last a lifetime, and that was what I meant itto be for me. The race was all Flamingo's own, and the mob was goingwild, when all of a sudden a woman--the widow of a racing-man gonesuddenly mad--rushed out in front of the horse, snatched at its bridlewith a shrill cry and down she came, and down Flamingo and the jockeycame, a melee of crushed humanity. And that was how I lost my last twothousand five hundred pounds, as I said at the Logan Trial. "

"Oh! Oh!" said Kitty Tynan, her face aflame, her eyes like topaz suns, her hands wringing. "Oh, that was--oh, poor Flamingo!" she added. 

A strange smile shot into Crozier's face, and the dark passion ofreminiscence fled from his eyes. "Yes, you are right, little friend, "he said. "That was the real tragedy after all. There was the horse doinghis best, his most beautiful best, as though he knew so much depended onhim, stretching himself with the last ounce of energy he could summon, feeling the psalm of success in his heart--yes, he knows, he knows whathe has done, none so well!--and out comes a black, hateful thing againsthim, and down he goes, his game over, his course run. I felt exactly asyou do, and I felt that before everything else when it happened. Then Ifelt for myself afterwards, and I felt it hard, as you can think. "

The break went from his voice, but it rang with reflective, rememberedmisery. "I was ruined. One thing was clear to me. I would not live onmy wife's money. I would not eat and drink what her money bought. No, I would not live on my wife. Her brother, a good enough, impulsive lad, with a tongue of his own and too small to thresh, came to me in Londonthe night of the race. He said his sister had been in the country-downat Epsom--and that she bitterly resented my having broken my promise andlost all I had. He said he had never seen her so angry, and he gave mea letter from her. On her return to town she had been obliged to goaway at once to see her sister taken suddenly ill. He added, with anunfeeling jibe, that he wouldn't like the reading of the letter himself. If he hadn't been such a chipmunk of a fellow I'd have wrung his neck. Iput the letter her letter-in my pocket, and next day gave my lawyer fullinstructions and a power of attorney. Then I went straight to Glasgow, took steamer for Canada, and here I am. That was near five years ago. "

"And the letter from your wife?" asked Kitty Tynan demurely and slyly. 

The Young Doctor looked at Crozier, surprised at her temerity, butCrozier only smiled gently. "It is in the desk there. Bring it to me, please, " he said. 

In a moment Kitty was beside him with the letter. He took it, turned itover, examined it carefully as though seeing it for the first time, andlaid it on his knee. 

"I have never opened it, " he said. "There it is, just as it was handedto me. "

"You don't know what is in it?" asked Kitty in a shocked voice. "Why, itmay be that--"

"Oh, yes, I know what is in it!" he replied. "Her brother's confidenceswere enough. I didn't want to read it. I can imagine it all. "

"It's pretty cowardly, " remarked Kitty. 

"No, I think not. It would only hurt, and the hurting could do no good. I can hear what it says, and I don't want to see it. "

He held the letter up to his ear whimsically. Then he handed it back toher, and she replaced it in the desk. 

"So, there it is, and there it is, " he sighed. "You have got mystory, and it's bad enough, but you can see it's not what Burlingamesuggested. "

"Burlingame--but Burlingame's beneath notice, " rejoined Kitty. "Isn'the, mother?"

Mrs. Tynan nodded. Then, as though with sudden impulse, Kitty cameforward to Crozier and leaned over him. The look of a mother was in hereyes. Somehow she seemed to herself twenty years older than this manwith the heart of a boy, who was afraid of his own wife. 

"It's time for your beef-tea, and when you've had it you must get yoursleep, " she said, with a hovering solicitude. 

"I'd like to give him a threshing first, if you don't mind, " said theYoung Doctor to her. 

"Please let a little good advice satisfy you, " Crozier remarkedruefully. "It will seem like old times, " he added rather bitterly. 

"You are too young to have had 'old times, '" said Kitty with gentlescorn. "I'll like you better when you are older, " she added. 

"Naughty jade, " exclaimed the Young Doctor, "you ought to be morerespectful to those older than yourself. "

"Oh, grandpapa!" she retorted. 

CHAPTER VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE

The harvest was over. The grain was cut, the prairie no longer wavedlike a golden sea, but the smoke of the incense of sacrifice still rosein innumerable spirals in the circle of the eye. The ground appearedbare and ill-treated, like a sheep first shorn; but yet nothing couldtake away from it the look of plenty, even as the fat sides of the shornsheep invite the satisfied eye of the expert. The land now, all stubble, still looked good for anything. If bare, it did not seem starved. It wasnaked and unshaven; it was stripped like a boxer for the rubbing-downafter the fight. Not so refined and suggestive and luxurious as when itwas clothed with the coat of ripe corn in the ear, it still showedthe fibre of its being to no disadvantage. And overhead the joy of theprairie grew apace. 

September saw the vast prairie spaces around Askatoon shorn andshrivelled of its glory of ripened grain, but with a new life comeinto the air-sweet, stinging, vibrant life, which had the suggestion ofnature recreating her vitality, inflaming herself with Edenic strength, a battery charging itself, to charge the world in turn with force andenergy. Morning gave pure elation, as though all created being muststrive; noon was the pulse of existence at the top of its activity;evening was glamorous; and all the lower sky was spread with thosecolours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled hiseyes. There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch ofpensiveness--the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indiansummer soon to come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn tothe past and forget that to-morrow was all in all. 

Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each otherunduly in this world, and they were not more numerous in Askatoon thanelsewhere. Not everybody was taking joy of sunrises and losing himselfin the delicate contentment of the sunset. There were many who took itall without thought, who absorbed it unconsciously, and got somethingfrom it; though there were many others who got nothing out of it atall, save the health and comfort brought by a precious climate whosesolicitous friend is the sun. These heeded it little, even though agood number of them came from the damp islands lying between the northAtlantic and the German Ocean. From Erin and England and the land o'cakes they came, had a few days of staring bright-eyed happy incredulityas to the permanency of such conditions, and then settled down to takeit as it was, endless days of sunshine and stirring vivacious air--asthough they had always known it and had it. 

There were exceptions, and these had joy in what they saw and feltaccording to the measure of their temperament. Shiel Crozier saw andfelt much of it, and probably the Young Doctor saw more of it than anyone; stray people here and there who take no part in this veracious talehad it in greater or less degree; fat Jesse Bulrush was so sensitive toit that he, as he himself said, "almost leaked sentimentality" and KittyTynan possessed it. She was pulsing with life, as a bird drunken withthe air's sweetness sings itself into an abandonment of motion. 

Before Crozier came she had enjoyed existence as existence, wonderingoften why it was she wanted to spring up from the ground with the ideathat she could fly, if she chose to try. Once when she was quite alittle girl she had said to her mother, "I'm going to ile away, " and hermother, puzzled, asked her what she meant. Her reply was, "It's inthe hymn. " Her mother persisted in asking what hymn; and was told withsomething like scorn that it was the hymn she herself had taught heronly child--"I'll away, I'll away to the Promised Land. "

Kitty had thought that "I'll away" meant some delicious motion which wasto ile, and she had visions of something between floating and flying asbeing that blessed means of transportation. 

As the years grew, she still wanted to "ile away" whenever the spiritof elation seized her, and it had increased greatly since Shiel Croziercame. Out of her star as he was, she still felt near to him, and asthough she understood him and he comprehended her. He had almost at oncebecome to her an admired mystery, which, however, at first she did notdare wish to solve. She had been content to be a kind of handmaiden to agenerous and adored master. She knew that where he had been she couldin one sense never go, and yet she wanted to be near him just the same. This was intensified after the Logan Trial and the shooting of the manwho somehow seemed to have made her live in a new way. 

As long ago as she could recall she had, in a crude, untutored way, beenfond of the things that nature made beautiful; but now she seemed tosee them in a new light, but not because any one had deliberately taughther. Indeed, it bored her almost to hear books read as Jesse Bulrushand Nurse Egan, and even her mother, read them to Crozier after hisoperation, to help him pass away the time. The only time she ever caredto listen--at school, though quick and clever, she had never cared forthe printed page--was when, by chance, poetry or verses were read orrecited. Then she would listen eagerly, not attracted by the words, butby the music of the lines, by the rhyme and rhythm, by the underlyingfeeling; and she got something out of it which had in one sense nothingto do with the verses themselves or with the conception of the poet. 

Curiously enough, she most liked to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He wasa born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent toKitty during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jessecontrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too;for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats andclean linen--he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, andhe had a taste in ties, which he made for himself out of silk boughtby the yard. He was, in fact, a clean, wholesome man, with a flair formaterial things, as he had shown in the land proposal on which ShielCrozier's fortunes hung, but with no gift for carrying them out, havingneither constructive ability nor continuity of purpose. Yet he was anagreeable, humorous, sentimental soul, who at fifty years of age foundhimself "an old bach, " as he called himself, in love at last with amiddle-aged nurse with dark brown hair and set figure, keen, intelligenteyes, and a most cheerful, orderly, and soothing way with her. 

Before Shiel Crozier was taken ill their romance began; but it grew involume and intensity after the trial and the shooting, when they met bythe bedside of the wounded man. Jesse had been away so much in differentparts of the country before then that their individual merits never hadhad a real chance to make permanent impression. By accident, however, his business made it necessary for him to be much in Askatoon atthe moment, and it was a propitious time for the growth of the finerfeelings. 

It had given Jesse Bulrush real satisfaction that Kitty Tynan listenedto his reading of poetry--Longfellow, Byron, Tennyson, Whyte Melville, and Adam Lindsay Gordon chiefly--with such absorbed interest. Hiscontent was the greater because his lovely nurse--he did think she waslovely, as Rubens thought his painted ladies beautiful, though theircordial, ostentatious proportions are not what Raphael regarded as thedivine lines--because his lovely nurse listened to his fat, happy voicerising and falling, swelling and receding on the waves of verse; thoughit meant nothing to her that one who had the gift of pleasant sound wasusing it on her behalf. 

This was not apparent to her Bulrush, though Crozier and Kittyunderstood. Jesse only saw in the blue-garbed, clear-visaged woman amistress of his heart, who had all the virtues and graces and who didnot talk. That, to him, was the best thing of all. She was a superblistener, and he was a prodigious talker--was it not all appropriate?

One day he went searching for Kitty at her favourite retreat, a littleknoll behind and to the left of the house, where a half-dozen trees madea pleasant resting-place at a fine look-out point. He found her in herusual place, with a look almost pensive on her face. He did not noticethat, for he was excited and elated. 

"I want to read you something I've written, " he said, and he drew fromhis pocket a paper. 

"If it's another description of the timber-land you have forsale-please, not to me, " she answered provokingly, for she guessed wellwhat he held in his hand. She had seen him writing it. She had even seensome of the lines scrawled and re-scrawled on bits of paper, showingcareful if not swift and skillful manufacture. One of these crumpled-upbits of paper she had in her pocket now, having recovered it that shemight tease him by quoting the lines at a provoking opportunity. 

"It's not that. It's some verses I've written, " he said, with a wave ofhis hand. 

"All your own?" she asked with an air of assumed innocent interest, andhe did not see the frivolous gleam in her eyes, or notice the touch ofaloes on her tongue. 

"Yes. Yes. I've always written verses more or less--I write a good manyadvertisements in verse, " he added cheerfully. "They are very popular. Not genius, quite, but there it is, the gift; and it has its uses incommerce as in affairs of the heart. But if you'd rather not, if itmakes you tired--"

"Courage, soldier, bear your burden, " she said gaily. "Mount your horseand get galloping, " she added, motioning him to sit. 

A moment later he was pouring out his soul through a pleasing voice, from fat lips, flanked by a high-coloured healthy cheek like a russetapple:

 "Like jewels of the sky they gleam, Your eyes of light, your eyes of fire; In their dark depths behold the dream Of Life's glad hope and Love's desire. 

 "Above your quiet brow, endowed With Grecian charm to crown your grace, Your hair in one soft Titian cloud Throws heavenly shadows on your face. "

"Well, I've never had verses written to me before, " Kitty remarkeddemurely, when he had finished and sat looking at her questioningly. "But 'dark depths'--that isn't the right thing to say of my eyes! AndTitian cloud of hair--is my hair Titian? I thought Titian hairwas bronzy-tawny was what Mr. Burlingame called it when he wasspouting, "--her upper lip curled in contempt. 

"It isn't you, and you know it, " he replied jerkily. She bridled. "Do you mean to say that you come and read to me without a word ofexplanation, so that I shouldn't misunderstand, verses written foranother? Am I to be told now that my eyes aren't eyes of light and eyesof fire, that I haven't got a Grecian brow? Do you dare to say thoseverses don't fit me--except for the Titian hair and heavenly shadows?And that I've got no right to think they're meant for me? Is it so, thata man that's lived in my mother's house for years, eating at the sametable with the family, and having his clothes mended free, with supperto suit him and no questions asked--is it so, that he reads me poetry, four lines at a stretch, and a rhyme every other line, and thenannounces it isn't for me!"

Her eyes flashed, her bosom palpitated, her hand made passionategestures, and she really seemed a young fury let loose. For a momenthe was deceived by her acting; he did not see the lurking grin in thedepths of her eyes. 

Her voice shook with assumed passion. "Because I didn't show what I feltall these years, and only exposed my real feelings when you read thoseverses to me, do you think any man who was a gentleman wouldn't in thecircumstances say, 'These verses are for you, Kitty Tynan'? You betrayedme into showing you what I felt, and then you tell me your verses arefor another girl!"

"Girl! Girl! Girl!" he burst out. "Nurse is thirty-seven--she told meso herself, and how could I tell that you--why, it's absurd! I've onlythought of you always as a baby in long skirts"--she spasmodically drewher skirts down over her pretty, shapely ankles, while she kept her eyescovered with one hand--"and you've seen me makin' up to her ever sinceCrozier got the bullet. Ever since he was operated on, I've--"

"Yes, yes, that's right, " she interrupted. "That's manly! Put the blameon him--him that couldn't help himself, struck by a horse-thief's bulletin the dark; him that's no more to blame for your carryings on whiledeath was prowling about the door there--"

"Carryings on! Carryings on!" Jesse Bulrush was thoroughly excited andindignant. The little devil, to put him in a hole like this! "Carryingson! I've acted like a man all through--never anything else in yourhouse, and it's a shame that I've got to listen to things that havenever been said of me in all my life. My mother was a good, true woman, and she brought me up--"

"Yes, that's it, put it on your mother now, poor woman! who isn't hereto stretch out her hand and stop you from playing a double game with twogirls so placed they couldn't help themselves--just doing kind acts fora sick man. " Suddenly she got to her feet. "I tell you, Jesse Bulrush, that you're a man--you're a man--"

But she could keep it up no longer. She burst out laughing, and thefalse tears of the actress she dashed from her eyes as she added: "Thatyou're a man after my own heart. But you can't have it, even if you areafter it, and you are welcome to the thirty-seven-year-old seraph inthere!" She tossed a hand towards the house. 

By this time he was on his feet too, almost bursting. "Well, you wickedlittle rip--you Ellen Terry at twenty-two, to think you could play it uplike that! Why, never on the stage was there such--!"

"It's the poetry made me do it. It inspired me, " she gurgled. "Ifelt--why, I felt here"--she pressed her hand to her heart "all thepangs of unrequited love--oh, go away, go back to the house and readthat to her! She's in the sitting-room, and my mother's away down-town. Now's your chance, Claude Melnotte. "

She put both hands on his big, panting chest and pushed him backwardtowards the house. "You're good enough for anybody, and if I wasn't soyoung and daren't leave mother till I get my wisdom-teeth cut, and tillI'm thirty-seven--oh, oh, oh!" She laughed till the tears came into hereyes. "This is as good as--as a play. "

"It's the best acted play I ever saw, from 'Ten Nights in a Bar-room'to 'Struck Oil, '" rejoined Jesse Bulrush, with a face still half ashamedyet beaming. "But, tell me, you heartless little woman, are the versesworth anything? Do you think she'll like them?"

Kitty grew suddenly serious, and a curious look he could not readdeepened in her eyes. "Nurse 'll like them--of course she will, " shesaid gently. "She'll like them because they are you. Read them to her asyou read them to me, and she'll only hear your voice, and she'll thinkthem clever and you a wonderful man, even if you are fifty and weigha thousand pounds. It doesn't matter to a woman what a man's saying ordoing, or whether he's so much cleverer than she is, if she knows thatunder everything he's saying, 'I love you. ' A man isn't that way, but awoman is. Now go. " Again she pushed him with a small brown hand. 

"Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" he said admiringly. 

"Then be a father to me, " she said teasingly. 

"I can't marry both your mother and nurse. "

"P'r'aps you can't marry either, " she replied sarcastically, "and I knowthat in any case you'll never be any relative of mine by marriage. Getgoing, " she said almost impatiently. 

He turned to go, and she said after him, as he rolled away, "I'll letyou hear some of my verses one day when you're more developed and canunderstand them. "

"I'll bet they beat mine, " he called back. 

"You'll win your bet, " she answered, and stood leaning against a treewith a curious look emerging and receding in her eyes. When he haddisappeared, sitting down, she drew from her breast a slip of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on her knee. "It is better, " she said. "It'snot good poetry, of course, but it's truer, and it's not done accordingto a pattern like his. Yes, it's real, real, real, and he'll never seeit--never see it now, for I've fought it' all out, and I've won. "

Then she slowly read the verses aloud:

"Yes, I've won, " she said with determination. So many of her sex havesaid things just as decisively, and while yet the exhilaration of theirdecision was inflaming them, have done what they said they would never, never, never do. Still there was a look in the fair face which meant anew force awakened in her character. 

For a long time she sat brooding, forgetful of the present and of thelittle comedy of elderly lovers going on inside the house. She wasthinking of the way conventions hold and bind us; of the lack of freedomin the lives of all, unless they live in wild places beyond the socialpale. Within the past few weeks she had had visions of such a worldbeyond this active and ordered civilisation, where the will and theconscience of a man or woman was the only law. She was not lawless inmind or spirit. She was only rebelling against a situation in which shewas bound hand and foot, and could not follow her honest and exclusivedesire, if she wished to do so. 

Here was a man who was married, yet in a real sense who had no wife. Suppose that man cared for her, what a tragedy it would be for them tobe kept apart! This man did not love her, and so there was no tragedyfor both. Still all was not over yet--yes, all was "over and overand over, " she said to herself as she sprang to her feet with a sharpexclamation of disgust--with herself. 

Her mother was coming hurriedly towards her from the house. There wasa quickness in her walk suggesting excitement, yet from the look in herface it was plain that the news she brought was not painful. "He told meyou were here, and--"

"Who told you I was here?"

"Mr. Bulrush. "

"So it's all settled, " she said, with a little quirk of her shoulders. 

"Yes, he's asked her, and they're going to be married. It's enough tomake you die laughing to see the two middle-aged doves cooing in there. "

"I thought perhaps it would be you. He said he would like to be a fatherto me. "

"That would prevent me if nothing else would, " answered the widow ofTyndall Tynan. "A stepfather to an unmarried girl, both eyeing eachother for a chance to find fault--if you please, no thank you!"

"That means you won't get married till I'm out of the way?" asked Kitty, with a look which was as much touched with myrrh as with mirth. 

"It means I wouldn't get married till you are married, anyway, " was thecomplacent answer. 

"Is there any one special that--"

"Don't talk nonsense. Since your father died I've only thought of hischild and mine, and I've not looked where I might. Instead, I've donemy best to prove that two women could live and succeed without a manto earn for them; though of course without the pension it couldn't havebeen done in the style we've done it. We've got our place!"

There is a dignity attached to a pension which has an influence quiteits own, and in the most primitive communities it has an aristocraticcharacter which commands general respect. In Askatoon people gave Mrs. Tynan a better place socially because of her pension than they wouldhave done if she had earned double the money which the pension broughther. 

"Everybody has called on us, " she added with reflective pride. 

"Principally since Mr. Crozier came, " added Kitty. "It's funny, isn'tit, how he made people respect him before they knew who he was?"

"He would make Satan stand up and take off his hat, if he paid Hades avisit, " said Mrs. Tynan admiringly. "Anybody'd do anything for him. "

Kitty eyed her mother closely. There was a strange, far-away, broodinglook in Mrs. Tynan's eyes, and she seemed for a moment lost in thought. 

"You're in love with him, " said Kitty sharply. 

"I was, in a way, " answered her mother frankly. "I was, in a way, a kindof way, till I knew he was married. But it didn't mean anything. I neverthought of it except as a thing that couldn't be. "

"Why couldn't it be?" asked Kitty, smothering an agitation rising in herbreast. 

"Because I always knew he belonged to where we didn't, and because ifhe was going to be in love himself, it would be with some girl like you. He's young enough for that, and it's natural he should get as his profitthe years of youth that a young woman has yet to live. "

"As though it was a choice between you and me, for instance!"

Mrs. Tynan started, but recovered herself. "Yes. If there had been anychoosing, he'd not have hesitated a minute. He'd have taken you, ofcourse. But he never gave either of us a thought that way. "

"I thought that till--till after he'd told us his story, " replied Kittyboldly. 

"What has happened since then?" asked her mother, with suddenapprehension. 

"Nothing has happened since. I don't understand it, but it's as thoughhe'd been asleep for a long time and was awake again. "

Mrs. Tynan gravely regarded her daughter, and a look of fear came intoher face. "I knew you kept thinking of him always, " she said; "but youhad such sense, and he never showed any feeling for you; and younggirls get over things. Besides, you always showed you knew he wasn't apossibility. But since he told us that day about his being married andall, has--has he been different towards you?"

"Not a thing, not a word, " was the reply; "but--but there's a differencewith him in a way. I feel it when I go in the room where he is. "

"You've got to stop thinking of him, " insisted the elder womanquerulously. "You've got to stop it at once. It's no good. It's bad foryou. You've too much sense to go on caring for a man that--"

"I'm going to get married, " said Kitty firmly. "I've made up my mind. If you have to think about one person, you should stop thinking aboutanother; anyhow, you've got to make yourself stop. So I'm going tomarry--and stop. "

"Who are you going to marry, Kitty? You don't mean to say it's JohnSibley!"

"P'r'aps. He keeps coming. "

"That gambling and racing fellow!"

"He owns a big farm, and it pays, and he has got an interest in a mine, and--"

"I tell you, you shan't, " peevishly interjected Mrs. Tynan. "You shan't. He's vicious. He's--oh, you shan't! I'd rather--"

"You'd rather I threw myself away--on a married man?" asked Kittycovertly. 

"My God--oh, Kitty!" said the other, breaking down. "You can't meanit--oh, you can't mean that you'd--"

"I've got to work out my case in my own way, " broke in Kitty calmly. "Iknow how I've got to do it. I have to make my own medicine--and take it. You say John Sibley is vicious. He has only got one vice. "

"Isn't it enough? Gambling--"

"That isn't a vice; it's a sport. It's the same as Mr. Crozier had. Mr. Crozier did it with horses only, the other does it with cards andhorses. The only vice John Sibley's got is me. "

"Is you?" asked her mother bewilderedly. 

"Well, when you've got an idea you can't control and it makes you itsslave, it's a vice. I'm John's vice, and I'm thinking of trying to curehim of it--and cure myself too, " Kitty added, folding and unfolding thepaper in her hand. 

"Here comes the Young Doctor, " said her mother, turning towards thehouse. "I think you don't mean to marry Sibley, but if you do, make himgive up gambling. "

"I don't know that I want him to give it up, " answered Kitty musingly. 

A moment later she was alone with the Young Doctor. 

CHAPTER VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER

"What's this you've been doing?" asked the Young Doctor, with aquizzical smile. "We never can tell where you'll break out. "

"Kitty Tynan's measles!" she rejoined, swinging her hat by its ribbon. "Mine isn't a one-sided character, is it?"

"I know one of the sides quite well, " returned the Young Doctor. 

"Which, please, sir?"

The Young Doctor pretended to look wise. "The outside. I read it like abook. It fits the life in which it moves like the paper on the wall. ButI'm not sure of the inside. In fact, I don't think I know that at all. "

"So I couldn't call you in if my character was sick inside, could I?"she asked obliquely. 

"I might have an operation, and see what's wrong with it, " he answeredplayfully. 

Suddenly she shivered. "I've had enough of operations to last meawhile, " she rejoined. "I thought I could stand anything, but youroperation on Mr. Crozier taught me a lesson. I'd never be a doctor'swife if I had to help him cut up human beings. "

"I'll remember that, " the Young Doctor replied mockingly. 

"But if it would help put things on a right basis, I'd make a bargainthat I wasn't to help do the carving, " she rejoined wickedly. The YoungDoctor always incited her to say daring things. They understood eachother well. "So don't let that stand in the way, " she added slyly. 

"The man who marries you will be glad to get you without the anatomy, "he returned gallantly. 

"I wasn't talking of a man; I was talking of a doctor. "

He threw up a hand and his eyebrows. "Isn't a doctor a man?"

"Those I've seen have been mostly fish. "

"No feelings--eh?"

She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of shiver go through him. "Not enough to notice. I never observed you had any, " she replied. "If Isaw that you had, I'd be so frightened I'd fly. I've seen pictures ofan excited whale turning a boat full of men over. No, I couldn't bear tosee you show any feeling. "

The dark eyes of the Young Doctor suddenly took on a look which wasa stranger to them. In his relations with women he was singularlyimpersonal, but he was a man, and he was young enough to feel the Adamstir in him. The hidden or controlled thing suddenly emerged. It was notthe look which would be in his eyes if he were speaking to the woman hewanted to marry. Kitty saw it, and she did not understand it, for shehad at heart a feeling that she could go to him in any trouble of lifeand be sure of healing. To her he seemed wonderful; but she thought ofhim as she would have thought of her father, as a person of authorityand knowledge--that operation showed him a great man, she thought, soskillful and precise and splendid; and the whole countryside had suchconfidence in him. 

She regarded him as a being apart; but for a moment, an ominous moment, he was almost one with that race of men who feed in strange pastures. She only half saw the reddish glow which came swimming into his eyes, and she did not realise it, for she did not expect to find it there. For an instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence ofwoman life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the materialbeing, the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was theemergence of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since hehad never married and had never dallied! But in a moment it was goneagain--driven away. 

"What a wicked little flirt you are!" he said, with a shake of the head. "You'll come to a bad end, if you don't change your ways. "

"Perform an operation, then, if you think you know what's the matterwith me, " she retorted. "Sometimes in operating for one disease we comeon another, and then there's a lot of thinking to be done. "

The look in her face was quizzical, yet there was a strange, elusivegravity in her eyes, an almost pathetic appealing. "If you were going tooperate on me, what would it be for?" she asked more flippantly than herface showed. 

"Well, it's obscure, and the symptoms are not usual, but I should strikefor the cancer love, " he answered, with a direct look. 

She flushed and changed on the instant. "Is love a cancer?" she asked. All at once she felt sure that he read her real story, and somethingvery like anger quickened in her. 

"Unrequited love is, " he answered deliberately. "How do you know it isunrequited?" she asked sharply. 

"Well, I don't know it, " he answered, dismayed by the look in her face. "But I certainly hope I'm right. I do, indeed. "

"And if you were right, what would you do--as a surgeon?" shequestioned, with an undertone of meaning. 

"I would remove the cause of the disease. "

She came close and looked him straight in the eyes. "You mean that heshould go? You think that would cure the disease? Well, you are notgoing to interfere. You are not going to manoeuvre anything to get himaway--I know doctors' tricks. You'd say he must go away east or westto the sea for change of air to get well. That's nonsense, and it isn'tnecessary. You are absolutely wrong in your diagnosis--if that's whatyou call it. He is going to stay here. You aren't going to drive awayone of our boarders and take the bread out of our mouths. Anyhow, you'rewrong. You think because a girl worships a man's ability that she's inlove with him. I adore your ability, but I'd as soon fall in love with alobster--and be boiled with the lobster in a black pot. Such conceit menhave!"

He was not convinced. He had a deep-seeing eye, and he saw that she wasboldly trying to divert his belief or suspicion. He respected her forit. He might have said he loved her for it--with a kind of love whichcan be spoken of without blushing or giving cause to blush, or reasonfor jealousy, anger, or apprehension. 

He smiled down into her gold-brown eyes, and he thought what a realwoman she was. He felt, too, that she would tell him something thatwould give him further light if he spoke wisely now. 

"I'd like to see some proof that you are right, if I am wrong, " heanswered cautiously. 

"Well, I'm going to be married, " she said, with an air of finality. 

He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Impossible--there's no man worth it. Whois the undeserving wretch?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow, " she replied. "He doesn't know yet how happyhe's going to be. What did you come here for? Why did you want to seeme?" she added. "You had something you were going to tell me. Hadn'tyou?"

"That's quite right, " he replied. "It's about Crozier. This is my lastvisit to him professionally. He can go on now without my care. Yourswill be sufficient for him. It has been all along the very best care hecould have had. It did more for him than all the rest, it--"

"You don't mean that, " she interrupted, with a flush and a bosom thatleaped under her pretty gown. "You don't mean that I was of more usethan the nurse--than the future Mrs. Jesse Bulrush?"

"I mean just that, " he answered. "Nearly every sick person, every sickman, I should say, has his mascot, his ministering angel, as it were. It's a kind of obsession, and it often means life or death, whether themascot can stand the strain of the situation. I knew an old man--down byDingley's Flat it was, and he wanted a boy--his grand-nephew-beside himalways. He was getting well, but the boy took sick and the old man diedthe next day. The boy had been his medicine. Sometimes it's a particularnurse that does the trick; but whoever it is, it's a great vital fact. Well, that's the part you played to Mr. Shiel Crozier of Lammis andCastlegarry aforetime. He owes you much. "

"I am glad of that, " she said softly, her eyes on the distance. 

"She is in love with him in spite of what she says, " remarked the YoungDoctor to himself. "Well, " he continued aloud, "the fact is, Crozier'salmost well in a way, but his mind is in a state, and he is not going toget wholly right as things are. Since things came out in court, since hetold us his whole story, he has been different. It's as though--"

She interrupted him hastily and with suppressed emotion. "Yes, yes, do you think I've not noticed that? He's been asleep in a way for fiveyears, and now he's awake again. He is not James Gathorne Kerry now;he is James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, and--oh, you understand: he's backagain where he was before--before he left her. "

The Young Doctor nodded approvingly. "What a little brazen wonder youare! I declare you see more than--"

"Yet you won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever forme, " he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girlthat'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's backagain, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back againalso. "

"She ought to be here, " was Kitty's swift reply, "though I think mightylittle of her--mighty little, I can tell you. Stuckup, great tall storkof a woman, that lords it over a man as though she was a goddess. Wearsdiamonds in the middle of the day, I suppose, and cold-blooded as--as afish. "

"She ought to have married me, according to your opinion of me. You saidI was a fish, " remarked the Young Doctor, with a laugh. 

"The whale and the catfish!"

"Heavens, what spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish--what do you know aboutMrs. Crozier? You may be brutally unjust--waspishly unjust, I shouldsay. "

"Do I look like a wasp?" she asked half tearfully. She was in a strangemood. 

"You look like a golden busy bee, " he answered. "But tell me, how didyou come to know enough about her to call her a cat?"

"Because, as you say, I was a busy golden bee, " she retorted. 

"That information doesn't get me much further, " he answered. 

"I opened that letter, " she replied. 

"'That letter'--you mean you opened the letter he showed us which he hadleft sealed as it came to him five years ago?" The Young Doctor's facewore a look of dismay. 

"I steamed the envelope open--how else could I have done it! I steamedit open, saw what I wanted, and closed it up again. "

The Young Doctor's face was pale now. This was a terrible revelation. Hehad a man's view of such conduct. He almost shrank from her, though shestood there as inviting and innocent a specimen of girlhood as the eyecould wish to see. She did not look dishonourable. 

"Do you realise what that means?" he asked in a cold, hard tone. 

"Oh, come, don't put on that look and don't talk like John theEvangelist, " she retorted. "I did it, not out of curiosity, and not todo any one harm, but to do her good--his wife. "

"It was dishonourable--wicked and dishonourable. "

"If you talk like that, Mr. Piety, I'm off, " she rejoined, and shestarted away. 

"Wait--wait, " he said, laying firm fingers on her arm. "Of course youdid it for a good purpose. I know. You cared enough for him for that. "

He had said the right thing, and she halted and faced him. "I caredenough to do a good deal more than that if necessary. He has been like asecond father to me, and--"

Suddenly a light of humour shot into the eyes of both. Sheil Crozier asa "father" to her was too artificial not to provoke their sense of thegrotesque. 

"I wanted to find out his wife's address to write to her and tell her tocome quick, " she explained. "It was when he was at the worst. And then, too, I wanted to know the kind of woman she was before I wrote to her. So--"

"You mean to say you read that letter which he had kept unopened andunread for five long years?" The Young Doctor was certainly disturbedagain. 

"Every word of it, " Kitty answered shamelessly, "and I'm not sorry. Itwas in a good cause. If he had said, 'Courage, soldier, ' and opened itfive years ago, it would have been good for him. Better to get thingslike that over. "

"It was that kind of a letter, was it--a catfish letter?"

Kitty laughed a little scornfully. "Yes, just like that, Mr. EasilyShocked. Great, showy, purse-proud creature!"

"And you wrote to her?"

"Yes--a letter that would make her come if anything would. Talk oftact--I was as smooth as a billiard-ball. But she hasn't come. "

"The day after the operation I cabled to her, " said the Young Doctor. 

"Then you steamed the letter open and read it too?" asked Kittysarcastically. 

"Certainly not. Ladies first-and last, " was the equally sarcasticanswer. "I cabled to Castlegarry, his father's place, also to Lammisthat he mentioned when he told us his story. Crozier of Lammis, he was. "

"Well, I wrote to the London address in the letter, " added Kitty. "Idon't think she'll come. I asked her to cable me, and she hasn't. Iwrote such a nice letter, too. I did it for his sake. "

The Young Doctor laid his hands on both her shoulders. "Kitty Tynan, theman who gets you will get what he doesn't deserve, " he remarked. 

"That might mean anything. "

"It means that Crozier owes you more than he can guess. "

Her eyes shone with a strange, soft glow. "In spite of opening theletter?"

The Young Doctor nodded, then added humorously: "That letter you wroteher--I'm not sure that my cable wouldn't have far more effect than yourletter. "

"Certainly not. You tried to frighten her, but I tried to coax her, tomake her feel ashamed. I wrote as though I was fifty. "

The Young Doctor regarded her dubiously. "What was the sort of thing yousaid to her?"

"For one thing, I said that he had every comfort and attention twoloving women and one fond nurse could give him; but that, of course, hislegitimate wife would naturally be glad to be beside him when he passedaway, and that if she made haste she might be here in time. "

The Young Doctor leaned against a tree shaking with laughter. 

"What are you smiling at?" Kitty asked ironically. "Oh, she'll be sureto come--nothing will keep her away after being coaxed like that!" hesaid, when he could get breath. 

"Laughing at me as though I was a clown in a circus!" she exclaimed. "Laughing when, as you say yourself, the man that she--the cat--wrotethat fiendish letter to is in trouble. "

"It was a fiendish letter, was it?" he asked, suddenly sobered again. "No, no, don't tell me, " he added, with a protesting gesture. "I don'twant to hear. I don't want to know. I oughtn't to know. Besides, if shecomes, I don't want to be prejudiced against her. He is troubled, poorfellow. "

"Of course he is. There's the big land deal--his syndicate. He's gota chance of making a fortune, and he can't do it because--but JesseBulrush told me in confidence, so I can't explain. "

"I have an idea, a pretty good idea. Askatoon is small. "

"And mean sometimes. "

"Tell me what you know. Perhaps I can help him, " urged the Young Doctor. "I have helped more than one good man turn a sharp corner here. "

She caught his arm. "You are as good as gold. "

"You are--impossible, " he replied. 

They talked of Crozier's land deal and syndicate as they walked slowlytowards the house. Mrs. Tynan met them at the door, a look of excitementin her face. "A telegram for you Kitty, " she said. 

"For me!" exclaimed Kitty eagerly. "It's a year since I had one. "

She tore open the yellow envelope. A light shot up in her face. Shethrust the telegram into the Young Doctor's hands. 

"She's coming; his wife's coming. She's in Quebec now. It was myletter--my letter, not your cable, that brought her, " Kitty addedtriumphantly. 

CHAPTER IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY

It was as though Crozier had been told of the coming of his wife, forwhen night came, on the day Kitty had received her telegram, he couldnot sleep. He was the sport of a consuming restlessness. His brain wouldnot be still. He could not discharge from it the thoughts of the day andmake it vacuous. It would not relax. It seized with intentness on eachthing in turn, which was part of his life at the moment, and gave itan abnormal significance. In vain he tried to shake himself free of thesuccessive obsessions which stormed down the path of the night, dragginghim after them, a slave lashed to the wheels of a chariot of flame. 

At last it was the land deal and syndicate on which his future depended, and the savage fate which seemed about to snatch his fortune away as ithad done so often before; as it had done on the day when Flamingo wentdown near the post at the Derby with a madwoman dragging at the bridle. He had had a sure thing then, and it was whisked away just when it wouldhave enabled him to pass the crisis of his life. Wife, home, the oldfascinating, crowded life--they had all vanished because of that viletrick of destiny; and ever since then he had been wandering in thewilderness through years that brought no fruit of his labours. Yet herewas his chance, his great chance, to get back what he had and was in theold misspent days, with new purposes in life to follow and serve; andit was all in cruel danger of being swept away when almost within hisgrasp. 

If he could but achieve the big deal, he could return to wife and home, he could be master in his own house, not a dependent on his wife'sbounty. That very evening Jesse Bulrush, elated by his own good fortunein capturing Cupid, had told him as sadly as was possible, while hisown fortunes were, as he thought, soaring, that every avenue of creditseemed closed; that neither bank nor money-lender, trust nor loancompany, would let him have the ten thousand dollars necessary for himto hold his place in the syndicate; while each of the other membersof the clique had flatly and cheerfully refused, saying they were busycarrying their own loads. Crozier had commanded Jesse not to approachthem, but the fat idealist had an idea that his tongue had a gift ofwheedling, and he believed that he could make them "shell out, " ashe put it. He had failed, and he was obliged to say so, when Crozier, suspecting, brought him to book. 

"They mean to crowd you out--that's their game, " Bulrush had said. "They've closed up all the ways to cash or credit. They're laying to doyou out of your share. Unless you put up the cash within the four daysleft, they'll put it through without you. They told me to tell youthat. "

And Crozier had not even cursed them. He said to Jesse Bulrush that itwas an old game to get hold of a patent that made a fortune for a songwhile the patentee died in the poor-house. Yet that four days was timeenough for a live man to do a "flurry of work, " and he was fit enough towalk up their backs yet with hobnailed boots, as they said in Kerry whena man was out for war. 

Over and over again this hovering tragedy drove sleep from his eyes; andin the spaces between there were a hundred fleeting visions of littleand big things to torture him--remembrances of incidents when debts anddisasters dogged his footsteps; and behind them all, floating among theelves and gnomes of ill-luck and disappointment, was a woman's face. Itwas not his wife's face, not a face that belonged to the old life, butone which had been part of his daily existence for over four years. Itwas the first face he saw when he came back from consciousness after theoperation which saved his life--the face of Kitty Tynan. 

And ever since the day when he had told the story of his life this facehad kept passing before his eyes with a disturbing persistence. Kittyhad said to her mother and to the Young Doctor that he had seemed afterhe had told his story like one who had awakened; and in a sense it wasstartlingly true. It was as though, while he was living under an assumedname, the real James Shiel Gathorne Crozier did not exist, or was in thefar background of the doings and sayings of J. G. Kerry. His wife andthe past had been shadowy in a way, had been as part of a life livedout, which would return in some distant day, but was not vital to thepresent. Much as he had loved his wife, the violent wrench away from herhad seemed almost as complete as death itself; but the resumption ofhis own name and the telling if his story had produced a completepsychological change in him mentally and bodily. The impersonal feelingwhich had marked his relations with the two women of this household, and with all women, was suddenly gone. He longed for the arms of a womanround his neck--it was five years since any woman's arms had been there, since he had kissed any woman's lips. Now, in the hour when his fortuneswere again in the fatal balance, when he would be started again for afair race with the wife from whom he had been so long parted, anotherface came between. 

All at once the question Burlingame asked him, as to whether his wifewas living, came to him. He had never for an instant thought of her asdead, but now a sharp and terrifying anxiety came to him. If his wifewas living! Living? Her death had never been even a remote possibilityto his mind, though the parting had had the decisiveness of death. Beneath all his shrewdness and ability he was at heart a dreamer, aromanticist to whom life was an adventure in a half-real world. 

It was impossible to sleep. He tossed from side to side. Once he got upin the dark and drank great draughts of water; once again, as he thoughtof Mona, his wife, as she was in the first days of their married life, asudden impulse seized him. He sprang from his bed, lit a candle, wentto the desk where the unopened letter lay, and took it out. With thefeeling that he must destroy this record, this unread but, as heknew, ugly record of their differences, and so clear her memory of anycruelty, of any act of anger, he was about to hold it to the flame ofthe candle when he thought he heard a sound behind him as of the door ofhis room gently closing. Laying the letter down, he went to the doorand opened it. There was no one stirring. Yet he had a feeling as thoughsome one was there in the darkness. His lips framed the words, "Who is it? Is any one there?" but he did not utter them. 

A kind of awe possessed him. He was Celtic; he had been fed on thesupernatural when he was a child; he had had strange, indefinableexperiences or hallucinations in the days when he lived at Castlegarry, and all his life he had been a friend of the mystical. It is hard totell what he thought as he stood there and peered into the darknessof the other room-the living-room of the house. He was in a state oftrance, almost, a victim of the night. But as he closed the door softlythe words of the song that Kitty Tynan had sung to him the day when hefound her brushing his coat came to him and flooded his brain. The lasttwo verses of the song kept drowning his sense of the actual, and he wasswayed by the superstition of bygone ancestors:

 "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. 

 "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'"

He went to bed again, but sleep would not come. The verses of the lamentkept singing in his brain. He tossed from side to side, he sought tocontrol himself, but it was of no avail. Suddenly he remembered the bedof boughs he had made for himself at the place where Kitty had had hermeeting with the Young Doctor the previous day. Before he was shot heused to sleep in the open in the summer-time. If he could get to sleepanywhere it would be there. 

Hastily dressing himself in flannel shirt and trousers, and dragging ablanket from the bed, he found his way to the bedroom door, went intothe other room, and felt his way to the front door, which would openinto the night. All at once he was conscious of another presence in theroom, but the folk-song was still beating in his brain, and he reprovedhimself for succumbing to fantasy. Finding the front door in the dark, he opened it and stepped outside. There was no moon, but there weremillions of stars in the blue vault above, and there was enough lightfor him to make his way to the place where he had slept "hereaway andoft. "

He knew that the bed of boughs would be dry, but the night would be his, and the good, cool ground, and the soughing of the pines, and the sweet, infinitesimal and innumerable sounds of the breathing, sleeping earth. He found the place and threw himself down. Why, here were green boughsunder him, not the dried remains of what he had placed there! Kitty--itwas Kitty, dear, gay, joyous, various Kitty, who had done this thing, thinking that he might want to sleep in the open again after hisillness. Kitty--it was she who had so thoughtfully served him; Kitty, with the instinct of strong, unselfish womanhood, with the gift of theoutdoor life, with the unpurchasable gift of friendship. What a girl shewas! How rich she could make the life of a man!

 "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and laid his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?"

How different she was, this child of the West, of Nature, from thewoman he had left behind in England, the sophisticated, well-appointed, well-controlled girl; too well-controlled even in the first days ofmarried life; too well-controlled for him who had the rushing impulsesof a Celtic warrior of olden days. Delicate, refined, perfectlypoised, and Kitty beside her like a sunflower to a sprig of heliotrope!Mona--Kitty, the two names, the two who, so far, had touched his life, each in her own way, as none others had done, they floated before hiseyes till sight and feeling grew dim. With a last effort he strove toeject Kitty from his thoughts, for there was the wife he had won in therace of life, and he must stand by her, play the game, ride honestly, even in exile from her, run straight, even with that unopened, bitter, upbraiding letter in the--

He fell asleep, and soon and slowly and ever so dimly the opal light ofthe prairie dawn crept shyly over the landscape. With it came stealingthe figure of a girl towards the group of trees where lay the man ofLammis on the bed of green boughs which she had renewed for him. She hadfollowed him from the dark room, where she had waited near him throughthe night--near him, to be near him for the last time; alone with himand the kind, holy night before the morrow came which belonged to theother woman, who had written to him as she never could have written toany man in whose arms she ever had lain. And the pity and the tragedyof it was that he loved his wife--the catfish wife. The sharp, pitilessinstinct of love told her that the stirring in his veins which had comeof late to him, which beat higher, even poignantly, when she was nearhim now, was only the reflection of what he felt for his wife. She knewthe unmerciful truth, but it only deepened what she felt for him, yetwhat she must put away from herself after to-morrow. Those verses shewrote--they were to show that she had conquered herself. Yet, but a fewhours after, here she was kneeling outside his door at night, here shewas pursuing him to the place where he slept. The coming of the otherwoman--she knew well that she was something to this man of men--hadroused in her all she had felt, had intensified it. 

She trembled, but she drew near, accompanied by the heavenly odours ofthe freshened herbs and foliage and the cool tenderness of the riverclose by. In her white dress and loosened hair she was like some spiritof a new-born world finding her way to the place she must call home. Itwas all so dim, so like clouded silver, the trees and the grass and thebushes and the night. Noiselessly she stole over the grass and intothe shadows of the trees where he lay. Again and again she paused. Whatwould she do if he was awake and saw her? She did not know. The momentmust take care of itself. She longed to find him sleeping. 

It was so. The hazy light showed his face upward to the skies, hisbreast rising and falling in a heavy, luxurious sleep. 

She drew nearer and nearer till she was kneeling beside him. His facewas warm with colour even in the night air, warmer than she had everseen it. One hand lay across his chest and one was thrown back over hishead with the abandon of perfect rest. All the anxiety and restlessnesswhich had tortured him had fled, and his manhood showed bold and serenein the brightening dusk. 

A sob almost broke from her as she gazed her fill, then slowly sheleaned over and softly pressed her lips to his--the first time that everin love they had been given to any man. She had the impulse to throwher arms round him, but she mastered herself. He stirred, but he did notwake. His lips moved as she withdrew hers. 

"My darling!" he said in the quick, broken way of the dreamer. 

She rose swiftly and fled away among the trees towards the house. 

What he had said in his sleep--was it in reality the words ofunconsciousness, or was it subconscious knowledge?--they kept ringing inher ears. 

"My darling!" he had said when she kissed him. There was a light of joyin her eyes now, though she felt that the words were meant for another. Yet it was her kiss, her own kiss, which had made him say it. If--butwith happy eyes she stole to her room. 

CHAPTER X. "S. O. S. "

At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possibleshe would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernaclethere; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessingher the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broaddaylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body awisp of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thusit was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing todo. She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up witha buggy after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them atthe gate the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did notknow, but still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which shehad seen in the newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwreckedseafarers, the signal of the wireless telegraphy, "S. O. S. "--thepiteous call, "Save Our Souls!" It sprang to her lips, but it got nofarther except in an unconscious whisper. On the instant she feltso weak and shaken and lonely that she wanted to lean upon some onestronger than herself; as she used to lean against her father, while hesat with one arm round her studying his railway problems. She had beenself-sufficient enough all her life, --"an independent little bird offreedom, " as Crozier had called her; but she was like a boat tossed onmountainous waves now. 

"S. O. S. !--Save Our Souls!"

As though she really had made this poignant call Crozier turned round inthe buggy where he sat with Jesse Bulrush, pale but erect; and, with astrange instinct, he looked straight to where she was. When he saw herhis face flushed, he could not have told why. Was it that there hadpassed to him in his sleep the subconscious knowledge of the kiss whichKitty had given him; and, after all, had he said "My darling" to herand not to the wife far away across the seas, as he thought? A strangefeeling, as of secret intimacy, never felt before where Kitty wasconcerned, passed through him now, and he was suddenly consciousthat things were not as they had ever been; that the old impersonalcomradeship had vanished. It disturbed, it almost shocked him. Whereuponhe made a valiant effort to recover the old ground, to get out of thenew atmosphere into the old, cheering air. 

"Come and say good-bye, won't you?" he called to her. 

"S. O. S. --S. O. S. --S. O. S. !" was the cry in her heart, but she calledback to him from her lips, "I can't. I'm too busy. Come back soon, soldier. "

With a wave of the hand he was gone. "Not a care in the world she has, "Crozier said to Jesse Bulrush. "She's the sunniest creature Heaven evermade. "

"Too skittish for me, " responded the other with a sidelong look, for hehad caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him a sudden suspicion. 

"You want the kind you can drive with an oatstraw and a chirp--eh, myfriend?"

"Well, I've got what I want, " was the reply. "Neither of us 'll kickover the traces. "

"You are a lucky man, " replied Crozier. "You've got a remarkably bigprize in the lottery. She is a fine woman, is Nurse Egan, and I owe hera great deal. I only hope things turn out so well that I can give hera good fat wedding-present. But I shan't be able to do anythingthat's close to my heart if I can't get the cash for my share in thesyndicate. "

"Courage, soldier, as Kitty Tynan says, " responded Jesse Bulrushcheerily. "You never know your luck. The cash is waiting for yousomewhere, and it'll turn up, be sure of that. "

"I'm not sure of that. I can see as plain as your nose how Bradley andhis clique have blocked me everywhere from getting credit, and I'd givefive years of my life to beat them in their dirty game. If I fail to getit at Aspen Vale I'm done. But I'll have a try, a good big try. How farexactly is it? I've never gone by this trail. "

Bulrush shook his head reprovingly. "It's too long a journey for you totake after your knock-out. You're not fit to travel yet. I don't likeit a bit. Lydia said this morning it was a crime against yourself, goingoff like this, and--"

"Lydia?--oh yes, pardonnez-moi, m'sieu'! I did not know her name wasLydia. "

"I didn't either till after we were engaged. " Crozier stared in blankamazement. "You didn't know her name till after you were engaged? Whatdid you call her before that?"

"Why, I called her Nurse. " answered the fat lover. "We all called herthat, and it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every day. It had a sort of York-shilling confidence, and your life was in herhands--a first-class you-and-me kind of feeling. "

"Why don't you stick to it, then?"

"She doesn't want it. She says it sounds so old, and that I'd be callingher 'mother' next. "

"And won't you?" asked Crozier slyly. "Everything in season, " beamedJesse, and he shone, and was at once happy and composed. Crozierrelapsed into silence, for he was thinking that the lost years had beenbarren of children. He turned to look at the home they had left. It wassome distance away now, but he could see Kitty still at the corner ofthe house with a small harvest of laundered linen in her hand. 

"She made that fresh bed of boughs for me--ah, but I had a good sleeplast night!" he added aloud. "I feel fit for the fight before me. " Hedrew himself up and began to nod here and there to people who greetedhim. 

In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was saying to her mother, "Where is he going, mother?"

"To Aspen Vale, " was the reply. "If you'd been at breakfast you'd haveheard. He'll be gone two days, perhaps three. "

Three days! She regretted now that she had not said to herself, "Courage, soldier, " and gone to say good-bye to him when he calledto her. Perhaps she would not see him again till after the otherwoman--till after the wife-came. Then--then the house would be empty;then the house would be so still. And then John Sibley would come and--

CHAPTER XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER

Three days passed, but before they ended there came another telegramfrom Mrs. Crozier stating the time of her expected arrival at Askatoon. It was addressed to Kitty, and Kitty almost savagely tore it up intolittle pieces and scattered it to the winds. She did not even wait toshow it to the Young Doctor; but he had a subtle instinct as to why shedid not; and he was rather more puzzled than usual at what was passingbefore his eyes. In any case, the coming of the wife must alter allthe relations existing in the household of the widow Tynan. The old, unrestrained, careless friendship could not continue. The newcomerwould import an element of caste and class which would freeze mother anddaughter to the bones. Crozier was the essence of democracy, which inits purest form is akin to the most aristocratic element and is easilyaffiliated with it. He had no fear of Crozier. Crozier would remainexactly the same; but would not Crozier be whisked away out of Askatoonto a new fate, reconciled to being a receiver of his wife's bounty. 

"If his wife gets her arms round his neck, and if she wants to get themthere, she will, and once there he'll go with her like a gentleman, "said the Young Doctor sarcastically. Admiring Crozier as he did, he alsohad underneath all his knowledge of life an unreasonable apprehensionof man's weakness where a woman was concerned. The man who would facea cannon's mouth would falter before the face of a woman whom he couldcrumple with one hand. 

The wife arrived before Crozier returned, and the Young Doctor andKitty met the train. The local operator had not divulged to any one thecontents of the telegram to Kitty, and there were no staring spectatorson the platform. As the great express stole in almost noiselessly, likea tired serpent, Kitty watched its approach with outward cheerfulness. She had braced herself to this moment, till she looked the most buoyant, joyous thing in the world. It had not come easily. With desperation shehad fought a fight during these three lonely days, till at last she hadconquered, sleeping each night on Crozier's star-lit bed of boughs andcoming in with the silver-grey light of dawn. Now she leaned forwardwith heart beating fast; but with smiling face and with eyes so brightthat she deceived the Young Doctor. 

There was no sign of inward emotion, of hidden troubles, as she leanedforward to see the great lady step from the train--great in every sensewas this lady in her mind; imposing in stature, a Juno, a tragedy queen, a Zenobia, a daughter of the gods who would not stoop to conquer. Shelooked in vain, however, for the Mrs. Crozier she had imagined made noappearance from the train. She hastened down the platform still withkeen eyes scanning the passengers, who were mostly alighting to stretchtheir legs and get a breath of air. 

"She's not here, " she said at last darkly to the Young Doctor who hadfollowed her. 

Then suddenly she saw emerge from a little group at the steps of a cara child in a long dress--so it seemed to her, the being was so smalland delicate--and come forward, having hastily said good-bye to herfellow-passengers. As the Young Doctor said afterwards, "She wasn'tbigger than a fly, " and she certainly was as graceful and pretty andpiquante as a child-woman could be. 

Presently, with her alert, rather assertive blue eyes she saw Kitty, andcame forward. "Miss Tynan?" she asked, with an encompassing look. 

Now Kitty was idiomatic in her speech at times, and she occasionallyused slang of the best brand, but she avoided those colloquialismswhich were of the vocabulary of the uneducated. Indeed, she had had noinclination to use them, for her father had set her a good example, andshe liked to hear good English spoken. That was why Crozier's talk hadbeen like music to her; and she had been keen to distinguish between therhetorical method of Augustus Burlingame, who modelled himself on theorators of all the continents, and was what might be called a syntheticelocutionist. Kitty was as simple and natural as a girl could be, andas a rule had herself in perfect command; but she was so stunned by thesight of this petite person before her that, in reply to Mrs. Crozier'squestion, she only said abruptly

"The same!"

Then she came to herself and could have bitten her tongue out for thatplunge into the vernacular of the West; and forthwith a great prejudicewas set up in her mind against Mona Crozier, in whose eyes she caughta look of quizzical criticism or, as she thought, contemptuous comment. That for one instant she had been caught unawares and so had putherself at a disadvantage angered her; but she had been embarrassed andconfounded by this miniature goddess, and her reply was a vague echoof talk she heard around her every day. Also she could have choked theYoung Doctor, whom she caught looking at her with wondering humour, as though he was trying to see "what her game was, " as he said to herafterwards. 

It was all due to the fact that from the day of the Logan Trial, andparticularly from the day when Shiel Crozier had told his life-story, she had always imagined his wife as a stately Amazonian being withthe carriage of a Boadicea. She had looked for an empress in splendidgarments, and--and here was a humming-bird of a woman, scarcely bigger, than a child, with the buzzing energy of a bee, but with a queer sort ofmanfulness too; with a square, slightly-projecting chin, as Kitty cameto notice afterwards; together with some small lines about the mouth andat the eyes, which came from trouble endured and suffering undergone. Kitty did not notice that, but the Young Doctor took it in with hisembracing glance, as the wife saluted Kitty with her inward comment, which was:

"So this is the chit who wrote to me like a mother!" But Mona Crozierdid not underestimate Kitty for all that, and she wondered why it wasthat Kitty had written as she did. One thing was quite clear: Kitty hadhad good intentions, else why have written at all?

All these thoughts had passed through the mind of each, with a good manyothers, while they were shaking hands; and the Young Doctor summoned hisman to carry Mona's hand-luggage to the extra buggy he had brought tothe station. One of the many other thoughts that were passing throughthree active minds was Kitty's unspoken satire:

"Just think; this is the woman he talked of as though she was a movingmountain which would fall on you and crush you, if you didn't look out!"

No doubt Crozier would have repudiated this description of his talk, butthe fact was he had unconsciously spoken of Mona with a sort of hush inhis voice; for a woman to him was something outside real understanding. He had a romantic mediaeval view, which translated weakness and beautyinto a miracle, and what psychologists call "an inspired control. "

"She's no bigger than--than a wasp, " said Kitty to herself, after theYoung Doctor had assured Mrs. Crozier that her husband was almost wellagain; that he had recovered more quickly than was expected, and hadgained strength wonderfully after the crisis was passed. 

"An elephant can crush you, but a wasp can sting you, " was Kitty'sfurther inward comment, "and that's why he was always nervous when hespoke of her. " Then, as the Young Doctor had already done, she noticedthe tiny lines about the tiny mouth, and the fine-spun webs about thebird-bright eyes. 

The Young Doctor attributed these lines mostly to anxiety and inwardsuffering, but Kitty set them down as the outward signs of an inwardfretfulness and quarrelsomeness, which was rendered all the moreoffensive in her eyes by the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey--and this, ajourney across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste andfastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every foldof her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in thedecision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, and she saidto herself, "Wound up like a watch, cut like a cameo, " and she instinctively feltthe little dainty cameo-brooch at her own throat, the only jewellery sheever wore, or had ever worn. 

"Sensible of her not to bring a maid, " commented the Young Doctorinwardly. "That would have thrown Kitty into a fit. Yet how she managesto look like this after six thousand miles of sea and land going isbeyond me--and Crozier so rather careless in his ways. Not what youwould call two notes in the same key, she and Crozier, " he reflected ashe told her she need not trouble about her luggage, and took charge ofthe checks for it. 

"My husband--is--is he quite better now?" Mrs. Crozier asked with sharpanxiety, as the two-seated "rig" started away with the ladies in theback seat. 

"Oh, better, thanks to him, " was Kitty's reply, nodding towards theYoung Doctor. 

"You have told him I was coming?"

"Wasn't it better to have a talk with you first?" asked Kitty meaningly. 

Mrs. Crozier almost nervously twitched the little jet bag she carried, then she looked Kitty in the eyes. 

"You will, of course, have reason for thinking so, if you say it, " washer enigmatical reply. "And of course you will tell me. You did not lethim know that you had written to me, or that the doctor had cabled me?"

"Oh, you got his cable?" questioned Kitty with a little ring of triumphin her voice, meant to reach the ears of the Young Doctor. It did reachhim, and he replied to the question. 

"We thought it better not; chiefly because he had in this countryplanned his life with an exclusiveness, and on a principle which didnot, unfortunately, take you into account. "

The little lady blushed, or flushed. "May I ask how you know this to beso, if it is so?" she asked, and there was the sharpness of the wasp inher tone, as it seemed to Kitty. 

"The Logan Trial--I mentioned it in my letter to you, " interposed Kitty. "He was shot for the evidence he gave at the trial. Well, at the trial agreat many questions were asked by a lawyer who wanted to hurt him, andhe answered them. "

"Why did the lawyer want to hurt him?" Mona Crozier asked quickly. 

"Just mean-hearted envy and spite and devilry, " was Kitty's answer. "They were both handsome men, and perhaps that was it. "

"I never thought my husband handsome, though he was always distinguishedlooking, " was the quiet reply. 

"Ah, but you haven't seen him at all for so long!" remarked Kitty, alittle spitefully. 

"How do you know that?" Mrs. Crozier was nettled, though she did notshow it; but Kitty felt it was so, and was glad. 

"He said so at the Logan Trial. "

"Was that the kind of question asked at the trial?" the wife quicklyinterjected. 

"Yes, lots of that kind, " returned Kitty. 

"What was the object?"

"To make him look not so distinguished--like nothing. If a man isn'thandsome, but only distinguished"--Kitty's mood was dangerous--"and youmake him look cheap, that's one advantage, and--"

Here the Young Doctor, having observed the rising tide of antagonism inthe tone of the voices behind him, gently interposed, and made it clearthat the purpose was to throw a shadow on the past of her husbandin order to discredit his evidence; to which Mrs. Crozier nodded herunderstanding. She liked the Young Doctor, as who did not who came incontact with him, except those who had fear of him, and who had an ideathat he could read their minds as he read their bodies. And even thisgirl at her side--Mona Crozier realised that the part she had played wasevidently an unselfish one, though she felt with piercing intuition thatwhatever her husband thought of the girl, the girl thought too much ofher husband. Somehow, all in a moment, it made her sorry for the girl'ssake. The girl had meant well by her husband in sending for his wife, that was certain; and she did not look bad. She was too sedately andreservedly dressed, in spite of her auriferous face and head and herburnished tone, to be bad; too fearless in eye, too concentrated to bethe rover in fields where she had no tenure or right. 

She turned and looked Kitty squarely in the eyes, and a new, softer lookcame into her own, subduing what to Kitty was the challenging alertnessand selfish inquisitiveness. 

"You have been very good to Shiel--you two kind people, " she said, andthere came a sudden faint mist to her eyes. 

That was her lucky moment, and she spoke as she did just in time, forKitty was beginning to resent her deeply; to dislike her far more thanwas reasonable, and certainly without any justice. 

Kitty spoke up quickly. "Well, you see, he was always kind and good toother people, and that was why--"

"But that Mr. Burlingame did not like him?" The wife had a strangeintuition regarding Mr. Burlingame. She was sure that there was a womanin the case--the girl beside her?

"That was because Mr. Burlingame was not kind or good to other people, "was Kitty's sedate response. There was an undertone of reflection in thevoice which did not escape Mrs. Crozier's senses, and it also caught theear of the Young Doctor, to whom there came a sudden revelation of thereason why Burlingame had left Mrs. Tynan's house. 

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Crozier enigmatically. Presently, with suppressedexcitement as she saw the Young Doctor reining in the horses slowly, sheadded: "My husband--when have you arranged that I should see him?"

"When he gets back--home, " Kitty replied, with an accent on the lastword. 

Mrs. Crozier started visibly. "When he gets back home-back from where?He is not here?" she asked in a tone of chagrin. She had come a longway, and she had pictured this meeting at the end of the journey witha hundred variations, but never with this one--that she should not seeShiel at once when the journey was over, if he was alive. Was it hurtpride or disappointed love which spoke in her face, in her words? Afterall, it was bad enough that her private life and affairs should bedragged out in a court of law; that these two kind strangers, whom shehad never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circleof knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without herself-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the lookof the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her intheirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she--she whohad so appealed to her to come to him--have sought to humiliate her?

Kitty was not quite sure what she ought to say. "You see, we expectedhim back before this. He is very exact!"

"Very exact?" asked Mrs. Crozier in astonishment. This was a new phaseof Shiel Crozier's character. He must, indeed, have changed since he hadcaused her so much anxiety in days gone by. 

"Usen't he to be so?" asked Kitty, a little viciously. "He is so veryexact now, " she added. "He expected to be back home before this"--howshe loved to use that word home--"and so we thought he would be herewhen you arrived. But he has been detained at Aspen Vale. He had a bigbusiness deal on--"

"A big business deal? Is he--is he in a large way of business?" Monaasked almost incredulously. Shiel Crozier in a large way of business, in a big business deal? It did not seem possible. His had ever been thegame of chance. Business--business?

"He doesn't talk himself, of course; that wouldn't be like him, "--Kittyhad joy in giving this wife the character of her husband, "but they saythat if he succeeds in what he's trying to do now he will make a greatdeal of money. "

"Then he has not made it yet?" asked Mrs. Crozier. 

"He has always been able to pay his board regularly, with enough leftfor a pew in church, " answered Kitty with dry malice; for she mistookthe light in the other's eyes, and thought it was avarice; and the loveof money had no place in Kitty's make-up. She herself would never havebeen influenced by money where a man was concerned. 

"Here's the house, " she quickly added; "our home, where Mr. Crozierlives. He has the best room, so yours won't be quite so good. It'smother's--she's giving it up to you. With your trunks and things, you'llwant a room to yourself, " Kitty added, not at all unconscious that shewas putting a phase of the problem of Crozier and his wife in a verycommonplace way; but she did not look into Mrs. Crozier's face as shesaid it. 

Mrs. Crozier, however, was fully conscious of the poignancy of theremark, and once again her face flushed slightly, though she keptoutward composure. 

"Mother, mother, are you there?" Kitty called, as she escorted the wifeup the garden walk. 

An instant later Mrs. Tynan cheerfully welcomed the disturber of thepeace of the home where Shiel Crozier had been the central figure for solong. 

CHAPTER XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM

"What are you laughing at, Kitty? You cackle like a young hen with herfirst egg. " So spoke Mrs. Tynan to her daughter, who alternately swungbackwards and forwards in a big rocking-chair, silently gazing into thedistant sky, or sat still and "cackled" as her mother had said. 

A person of real observation and astuteness, however, would havenoticed that Kitty's laughter told a story which was not joy andgladness--neither good humour nor the abandonment of a luxurious nature. It was tinged with bitterness and had the smart of the nettle. 

Her mother's question only made her laugh the more, and at last Mrs. Tynan stooped over her and said, "I could shake you, Kitty. You'd makea snail fidget, and I've got enough to do to keep my senses steady withall the house-work--and now her in there!" She tossed a hand behind herfretfully. 

Quick with love for her mother, as she always was, Kitty caught theother's trembling hand. "You've always had too much to do, mother;always been slaving for others. You've never had time to think whetheryou're happy or not, or whether you've got a problem--that's what peoplecall things, when they're got so much time on their hands that they makea play of their inside feelings and work it up till it sets them crazy. "

Mrs. Tynan's mouth tightened and her brow clouded. "I've had my problemstoo, but I always made quick work of them. They never had a chance tooverlay me like a mother overlays her baby and kills it. "

"Not 'like a mother overlays, ' but 'as a mother overlays, '" returnedKitty with a queer note to her voice. "That's what they taught me atschool. The teacher was always picking us up on that kind of thing. Isaid a thing worse than that when Mrs. Crozier"--her fingers motionedtowards another room--"came to-day. I don't know what possessed me. Iwas off my trolley, I suppose, as John Sibley puts it. Well, when Mrs. James Shiel Gathorne Crozier said--oh, so sweetly and kindly--'You areMiss Tynan?' what do you think I replied? I said to her, 'The same'!"

Rather an acidly satisfied smile came to Mrs. Tynan's lips. "That waslike the Slatterly girls, " she replied. "Your father would have said itwas the vernacular of the rail-head. He was a great man for odd words, but he knew always just what he wanted to say and he said it out. You'vegot his gift. You always say the right thing, and I don't know why youmade that break with her--of all people. "

A meditative look came into Kitty's eyes. "Mr. Crozier says every onehas an imp that loves to tease us, and trip us up, and make us appearridiculous before those we don't want to have any advantage over us. "

"I don't want Mrs. Crozier to have any advantage over you and me, I cantell you that. Things'll never be the same here again, Kitty dear, andwe've all got on so well; with him so considerate of every one, and agood friend always, and just one of us, and his sickness making him seemlike our own, and--"

"Oh, hush--will you hush, mother!" interposed Kitty sharply. "He's goingaway with her back to the old country, and we might just as well thinkabout getting other borders, for I suppose Mr. Bulrush and his bonnybride will set up a little bulrush tabernacle on the banks of theNile"--she nodded in the direction of the river outside--"and they'llfind a little Moses and will treat it as their very own. "

"Kitty, how can you!"

Kitty shrugged a shoulder. "It would be ridiculous for that pair to haveone of their own. It's only the young mother with a new baby that looksnatural to me. "

"Don't talk that way, Kitty, " rejoined her mother sharply. "You aren'tfit to judge of such things. "

"I will be before long, " said her daughter. "Anyway, Mrs. Crozier isn'tany better able to talk than I am, " she added irrelevantly. "She neverwas a mother. "

"Don't blame her, " said Mrs. Tynan severely. "That's God's business. I'dbe sorry for her, so far as that was concerned, if I were you. It's nother fault. "

"It's an easy way of accounting for good undone, " returned Kitty. "P'r'aps it was God's fault, and p'r'aps if she had loved him more--"

Mrs. Tynan's face flushed with sudden irritation and that fretful lookcame to her eyes which accompanies a lack of comprehension. "Upon myword, well, upon my word, of all the vixens that ever lived, and youlooking like a yellow pansy and too sweet for daily use! Such thoughtsin your head! Who'd have believed that you--!"

Kitty made a mocking face at her mother. "I'm more than a girl, I'ma woman, mother, who sees life all around me, from the insect to themountain, and I know things without being told. I always did. Just lifeand living tell me things, and maybe, too, the Irish in me that fatherwas. "

"It's so odd. You're such a mixture of fun and fancy, at least youalways have been; but there's something new in you these days. Kitty, you make me afraid--yes, you make your mother afraid. After what yousaid the other day about Mr. Crozier I've had bad nights, and I getnervous thinking. "

Kitty suddenly got up, put her arm round her mother and kissed her. "You needn't be afraid of me, mother. If there'd been any real danger, Iwouldn't have told you. Mr. Crozier's away, and when he comes back he'llfind his wife here, and there's the end of everything. If there'd beendanger, it would have been settled the night before he went away. Ikissed him that night as he was sleeping out there under the trees. "

Mrs. Tynan sat down weakly and fanned herself with her apron. "Oh, oh, oh, dear Lord!" she said. "I'm not afraid to tell you anything I everdid, mother, " declared Kitty firmly; "though I'm not prepared to tellyou everything I've felt. I kissed him as he slept. He didn't wake, hejust lay there sleeping--sleeping. " A strange, distant, dreaming lookcame into her eyes. She smiled like one who saw a happy vision, and aneerie expression stole into her face. "I didn't want him to wake, " shecontinued. "I asked God not to let him wake. If he'd waked--oh, I'dhave been ashamed enough till the day I died in one way! Still he'd haveunderstood, and he'd have thought no harm. But it wouldn't have beenfair to him--and there's his wife in there, " she added, breaking offinto a different tone. "They're a long way above us--up among the peaks, and we're at the foot of the foothills, mother; but he never made usfeel that, did he? The difference between him and most of the men I'veever seen! The difference!"

"There's the Young Doctor, " said her mother reproachfully. 

"He-him! He's by himself, with something of every sort in him from thetop to the bottom. There's been a ditcher in his family, and there mayhave been a duke. But Shiel Crozier--Shiel"--she flushed as she saidthe name like that, but a little touch of defiance came into her facetoo--"he is all of one kind. He's not a blend. And he's married to herin there!"

"You needn't speak in that tone about her. She's as fine as can be. "

"She's as fine as a bee, " retorted Kitty. Again she laughed that almostmirthless laugh for which her mother had called her to account a momentbefore. "You asked me a while ago what I was laughing at, mother, " shecontinued. "Why, can't you guess? Mr. Crozier talked of her always asthough she was--well, like the pictures you've seen of Britannia, allswelling and spreading, with her hand on a shield and her face saying, 'Look at me and be good, ' and her eyes saying, 'Son of man, get uponthy knees!' Why, I expected to see a sort of great--goodness--graciousgoddess, that kept him frightened to death of her. Bless you, he neveropened her letter, he was so afraid of her; and he used to breathe onceor twice hard--like that, when he mentioned her!" She breathed in suchmock awe that her mother laughed with a little kindly malice too. 

"Even her letter, " Kitty continued remorselessly, "it was as thoughshe--that little sprite--wrote it with a rod of chastisement, as theBible says. It--"

"What do you know of the inside of that letter?" asked her mother, staring. 

"What the steam of the tea-kettle could let me see, " responded Kittydefiantly; and then, to her shocked mother, she told what she had done, and what the nature of the letter was. 

"I wanted to help him if I could, and I think I'll be able to doit--I've worked it all out, " Kitty added eagerly, with a glint of steelin the gold of her eyes and a fantastic kind of wisdom in her look. 

"Kitty, " said her mother severely and anxiously, "it's madnessinterfering with other people's affairs--of that kind. It never was anyuse. "

"This will be the exception to the rule, " returned Kitty. "There sheis"--again she flicked a hand towards the other room--"after they'vebeen parted five years. Well, she came after she read my letter to her, and after I'd read that unopened letter to him, which made me know howto put it all to her. I've got intuition--that's Celtic and mad, " sheadded, with her chin thrusting out at her mother, to whom the Irishthat her husband had been, which was so deep in her daughter, was ever amystery to her, and of which she was more or less afraid. 

"I've got a plan, and I believe--I know--it will work, " Kitty continued. "I've been thinking and thinking, and if there's trouble between them;if he says he isn't going on with her till he's made his fortune; if hethrows that unopened letter in her face, I'll bring in my inventionto deal with the problem, and then you'll see! But all this fuss for alittle tiny button of a thing like that in there--pshaw! Mr. Crozier isworth a real queen with the beauty of one of the Rhine maidens. How heused to tell that story of the Rhinegold--do you remember? Wasn't itgrand? Well, I am glad now that he's going--yes, whatever trouble theremay be, still he is going. I feel it in my heart. "

She paused, and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with aslight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, shewent on: "Now that he's going, I'm glad we've had the things he gave us, things that can't be taken away from us. What you have enjoyed is yoursfor ever and ever. It's memory; and for one moment or for one day orone year of those things you loved, there's fifty years, perhaps, formemory. Don't you remember the verses I cut out of the magazine:

 "'Time, the ruthless idol-breaker, Smileless, cold iconoclast, Though he rob us of our altars, Cannot rob us of the past. '"

"That's the way your father used to talk, " replied her mother. "There'sa lot of poetry in you, Kitty. "

"More than there is in her?" asked Kitty, again indicating the regionwhere Mrs. Crozier was. 

"There's as much poetry in her as there is in--in me. But she can dothings; that little bit of a babywoman can do things, Kitty. I knowwomen, and I tell you that if that woman hadn't a penny, she'd set toand earn it; and if her husband hadn't a penny, she'd make his homecomfortable just the same somehow, for she's as capable as can be. Shehad her things unpacked, her room in order herself--she didn't want yourhelp or mine--and herself with a fresh dress on before you could turnround. "

Kitty's eyes softened still more. "Well, if she'd been poor he wouldnever have left her, and then they wouldn't have lost five years--thinkof it, five years of life with the man you love lost to you!--and therewouldn't be this tough old knot to untie now. "

"She has suffered--that little sparrow has suffered, I tell you, Kitty. She has a grip on herself like--like--"

"Like Mr. Crozier with a broncho under his hand, " interjected Kitty. "She's too neat, too eternally spick and span for me, mother. It's asthough the Being that made her said, 'Now I'll try and see if I canproduce a model of a grown-up, full-sized piece of my work. ' Mrs. Crozier is an exhibition model, and Shiel Crozier's over six feet three, and loose and free, and like a wapiti in his gait. If he was a wapitihe'd carry the finest pair of antlers ever was. "

"Kitty, you make me laugh, " responded the puzzled woman. "I declare, you're the most whimsical creature, and--"

At that moment there came a tapping at the door behind them, and asmall, silvery voice said, "May I come in?" as the door opened and Mrs. Crozier, very precisely yet prettily dressed, entered. 

"Please make yourself at home--no need to rap, " answered Mrs. Tynan. "Out in the West here we live in the open like. There's no room closedto you, if you can put up with what there is, though it's not whatyou're used to. "

"For five months in the year during the past five years I've lived in ahouse about half as large as this, " was Mrs. Crozier's reply. "With myhusband away there wasn't the need of much room. "

"Well, he only has one room here, " responded Mrs. Tynan. "He neverseemed too crowded in it. "

"Where is it? Might I see it?" asked the small, dark-eyed, dark-hairedwife, with the little touch of nectarine bloom and a little powderalso; and though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, there was a look ofwistfulness in her eyes, a gleam of which Kitty caught ere it passed. 

"You've been separated, Mrs. Crozier, " answered the elder woman, "andI've no right to let you into his room without his consent. You've hadno correspondence at all for five years--isn't that so?"

"Did he tell you that?" the regal little lady asked composedly, but withan underglow of anger in her eyes. 

"He told the court that at the Logan Trial, " was the reply. 

"At the murder trial--he told that?" Mrs. Crozier asked almostmechanically, her face gone pale and a little haggard. 

"He was obliged to answer when that wolf, Gus Burlingame, was afterhim, " interposed Kitty with kindness in her tone, for, suddenly, shesaw through the outer walls of the little wife's being into the innercourts. She saw that Mrs. Crozier loved her husband now, whatever shehad done in the past. The sight of love does not beget compassion ina loveless heart, but there was love in Kitty's heart; and it was evengreater than she would have wished any human being to see; and by it shesaw with radium clearness through the veil of the other woman's being. 

"Surely he could have avoided answering that, " urged Mona Crozierbitterly. 

"Only by telling a lie, " Kitty quickly answered, "and I don't believehe ever told a lie in his life. Come, " she added, "I will show you hisroom. My mother needn't do it, and so she won't be responsible. Youhave your rights as a wife until they're denied you. You mustn't come, mother, " she said to Mrs. Tynan, and she put a tender hand on her arm. 

"This way, " she added to the little person in the pale blue, whichsuited well her very dark hair, blue eyes, and rose-touched cheeks. 

CHAPTER XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN

A moment later they stood inside Shiel Crozier's room. The first glancehis wife gave took in the walls, the table, the bureau, and thedesk which contained her own unopened letter. She was looking for aphotograph of herself. 

There was none in the room, and an arid look came into her face. Theglance and its sequel did not escape Kitty's notice. She knew well--aswho would not?--what Mona Crozier was hoping to see, and she washuman enough to feel a kind of satisfaction in the wife's chagrin anddisappointment; for the unopened letter in the baize-covered desk whichshe had read was sufficient warrant for a punishment and penalty due thelittle lady, and not the less because it was so long delayed. Had notShiel Crozier had his draught of bitter herbs to drink over the pastfive years?

Moreover, Kitty was sure beyond any doubt at all that Shiel Crozier'swife, when she wrote the letter, did not love her husband, or at leastdid not love him in the right or true way. She loved him only so far asher then selfish nature permitted her to do; only in so far as the prideof money which she had, and her husband had not, did not prevent; onlyin so far as the nature of a tyrant could love--though the tyranny waspink and white and sweetly perfumed and had the lure of youth. In herprimitive way Kitty had intuitively apprehended the main truth, and thatwas enough to justify her in contributing to Mona Crozier's punishment. 

Kitty's perceptions were true. At the start, Mona was in natureproportionate to her size; and when she married she had not lovedCrozier as he had loved her. Maybe that was why--though he may not haveadmitted it to himself--he could not bear to be beholden to her when hisruin came. Love makes all things possible, and there is no humiliationin taking from one who loves and is loved, that uncapitalised andcommunal partnership which is not of the earth earthy. Perhaps that waswhy, though Shiel loved her, he had had a bitterness which galledhis soul; why he had a determination to win sufficient wealth to makehimself independent of her. Down at the bottom of his chivalrous Irishheart he had learned the truth, that to be dependent on her would begetin her contempt for him, and he would be only her paid paramour andnot her husband in the true sense. Quixotic he had been, but under hisquixotism there was at least the shadow of a great tragical fact, andit had made him a matrimonial deserter. Whether tragedy or comedy wouldemerge was all on the knees of the gods. 

"It's a nice room, isn't it?" asked Kitty when there had passedfrom Mona Crozier's eyes the glaze or mist--not of tears, butstupefaction--which had followed her inspection of the walls, thebureau, the table, and the desk. 

"Most comfortable, and so very clean--quite spotless, " the wife answeredadmiringly, and yet drearily. It made her feel humiliated that her mancould live this narrow life of one room without despair, with sufficientresistance to the lure of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds and herown delicate and charming person. Here, it would seem, he was content. One easy-chair, made out of a barrel, a couch, a bed--a very narrow bed, like a soldier's, a bed for himself alone--a small table, a shelf on thewall with a dozen books, a little table, a bureau, and an old-fashioned, sloping-topped, shallow desk covered with green baize, on high legs, so that like a soldier too he could stand as he wrote (Crozier had madethat high stand for the desk himself). That was what the room conveyedto her--the spirit of the soldier, bare, clean, strong, sparse: aworkshop and a chamber of sleep in one, like the tent of an officer onthe march. After the feeling had come to her, to heighten the sensationshe espied a little card hung under the small mirror on the wall. Therewas writing on it, and going nearer, she saw in red pencil the words, "Courage, soldier!"

These were the words which Kitty was so fond of using, and the girl hada thrill of triumph now as she saw the woman from whom Crozier had fledlooking at the card. She herself had come and looked at it many timessince Crozier had gone, for he had only put it there just before he lefton his last expedition to Aspen Vale to carry through his deal. It hadbrought a great joy to Kitty's heart. It had made her feel that she hadsome share in his life; that, in a way, she had helped him on the march, the vivandiere who carried the water-bag which would give him drink whenparched, battle-worn, or wounded. 

Mona Crozier turned away from the card, sadly reflecting that nothing inthe room recalled herself; that she was not here in the very core of hislife in even the smallest way. Yet this girl, this sunny creaturewith the call of youth and passion in her eyes, this Ruth of thewheat-fields, came and went here as though she was a part of it. She didthis and that for him, and she was no doubt on such terms of intimacywith him that they were really part of each other's life in a scheme ofdomesticity unlike any boarding-house organization she had ever known. Here in everything there was the air, the decorum, and the unartificialcomfort of home. 

This was why he could live without his wedded wife and her gold and herbrocade, and the silk and the Persian rugs, and the grand piano and thecarriages and the high silk hat from Piccadilly. Her husband had hadthe luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on hishill--and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both beforeand after marriage. A feeling of impotent indignation suddenly tookpossession of her. Here he was with two women, unattached, --oneinteresting and good and agreeable and good-looking, and the otheralmost a beauty, --who were part of the whole rustic scheme in which helived. They made him comfortable, they did the hundred things thata valet or a fond wife would do; they no doubt hung on every word heuttered--and he could be interesting beyond most men. She had realisedterribly how interesting he was after he had fled; when men came abouther and talked to her in many ways, with many variations, but alwayswith the one tune behind all they said; always making for the one goal, whatever the point from which they started or however circuitous theirroute. 

As time went on she had hungrily longed to see her husband again, andother men had no power to interest her; but still she had not sought tofind him. At first it had been offended pride, injured self-esteem, in which the value of her own desirable self and of her very desirablefortune was not lost; then it became the pride of a wife in whom thespirit of the eternal woman was working; and she would have died ratherthan have sought to find him. Five years--and not a word from him. 

Five years--and not a letter from him! Her eyes involuntarily fell onthe high desk with the greenbaize top. Of all the letters he had writtenat that desk not one had been addressed to her. Slowly, and with anunintentional solemnity, she went up to it and laid a hand upon it. Herchin only cleared the edge of it-he was a tall man, her husband. 

"This is the place of secrets, I suppose?" she said, with a bright smileand an attempt at gaiety to Kitty, who had watched her with burningeyes; for she had felt the thrill of the moment. She was as sensitiveto atmosphere of this sad play of life as nearly and as vitally as thedeserted wife. 

"I shouldn't think it a place of secrets, " Kitty answered after amoment. "He seldom locks it, and when he does I know where the key is. "

"Indeed?" Mona Crozier stiffened. A look of reproach came into her eyes. It was as though she was looking down from a great height upon a poorcreature who did not know the first rudiments of personal honour, thefine elemental customs of life. 

Kitty saw and understood, but she did not hasten to reply, or to setthings right. She met the lofty look unflinchingly, and she hadpride and some little malice too--it would do Mrs. Crozier good, shethought--in saying, as she looked down on the humming-bird trying to bean eagle:

"I've had to get things for him-papers and so on, and send them on whenhe was away, and even when he was at home I've had to act for him; andso even when it was locked I had to know where the key was. He asked meto help him that way. "

Mona noted the stress laid upon the word home, and for the first timeshe had a suspicion that this girl knew more than even the Logan Trialhad disclosed, and that she was being satirical and suggestive. 

"Oh, of course, " she returned cheerfully in response to Kitty--"youacted as a kind of clerk for him!" There was a note in her voice whichshe might better not have used. If she but knew it, she needed thisgirl's friendship very badly. She ought to have remembered that shewould not have been here in her husband's room had it not been for theletter Kitty had written--a letter which had made her heart beat so fastwhen she received it, that she had sunk helpless to the floor on one ofthose soft rugs, representing the soft comfort which wealth can bring. 

The reply was like a slap in the face. 

"I acted for him in any way at all that he wished me to, " Kittyanswered, with quiet boldness and shining, defiant face. 

Mona's hand fell away from the green baize desk, and her eyes again losttheir sight for a moment. Kitty was not savage by nature. She had beengoaded as much by the thought of the letter Crozier's wife had writtento him in the hour of his ruin as by the presence of the woman in thishouse, where things would never be as they had been before. She hadstruck hard, and now she was immediately sorry for it: for this womanwas here in response to her own appeal; and, after all, she might wellbe jealous of the fact that Crozier had had close to him for so long andin such conditions a girl like herself, younger than his own wife, andprettier--yes, certainly prettier, she admitted to herself. 

"He is that kind of a man. What he asked for, any good woman could giveand not be sorry, " Kitty convincingly added when the knife had gone deepenough. 

"Yes, he was that kind of a man, " responded the other gently now, and with a great sigh of relief. Suddenly she came nearer and touchedKitty's arm. "And thank you for saying so, " she added. "He and I havebeen so long parted, and you have seen so much more of him than I haveof late years! You know him better--as he is. If I said something sharpjust now, please forgive me. I am--indeed, I am grateful to you and yourmother. "

She paused. It was hard for her to say what she felt she must say, forshe did not know how her husband would receive her--he had done withouther for so long; and she might need this girl and her mother sorely. Thegirl was a friend in the best sense, or she would not have sent for her. She must remind herself of this continually lest she should take wrongviews. 

Kitty nodded, but for a moment she did not reply. Her hand was on thebaize-covered desk. All at once, with determination in her eyes, shesaid: "You didn't use him right or you'd not have been parted for fiveyears. You were rich and he was poor, he is poor now, though he may berich any day, and he wouldn't stay with you because he wouldn't takeyour money to live on. If you had been a real wife to him he wouldn'thave seen that he'd be using your money; he'd have taken it as though itwas his own, out of the purse always open and belonging to both, just asthough you were partners. You must feel--"

"Hush, for pity's sake, hush!" interrupted the other. 

"You are going to see him again, " Kitty persisted. "Now, don't you thinkit just as well to know what the real truth is?"

"How do you know what is the truth?" asked the trembling little strangerwith a last attempt to hold her position, to conceal from herself theactual facts. 

"The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he wasill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. Hewanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told usthat he left you because he couldn't bear to live on your money. It wasyou made him feel that, though he didn't say so. All the time he toldhis story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some greatqueen--"

A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature's eyes. "He spoke like that of me; he said--?"

"He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that's the waywith people in love--they see what no one else sees, they think what noone else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his voice about youtill we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troywith a soul like an ocean, instead of"--she was going to say somethingthat would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time--"insteadof a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the sameas my father used to tell me about. "

"You think very badly of me, then?" returned the other with a sigh. Hercourage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanishedsuddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked. 

"We've only just begun. We're all his friends here, and we'll judgeyou and think of you according to what happens between you and him. Youwrote him that letter!"

She suddenly placed her hand on the desk as the inspiration came to herto have this matter of the letter out now, and to have Mrs. Crozierknow exactly what the position was, no matter what might be thought ofherself. She was only thinking of Shiel Crozier and his future now. 

"What letter did I write?" There was real surprise and wonder in hertone. 

"That last letter you wrote to him--the letter in which you gave himfits for breaking his promise, and talked like a proud, angry angel fromthe top of the stairs. "

"How do you know of that letter? He, my husband, told you what was inthat letter; he showed it to you?" The voice was indignant, low, andalmost rough with anger. 

"Yes, your husband showed me the letter--unopened. "

"Unopened--I do not understand. " Mona steadied herself against the footof the bed and looked in a helpless way at Kitty. Her composure wasgone, though she was very quiet, and she had that look of a vitalabsorption which possesses human beings in crises of their lives. 

Suddenly Kitty took from behind a book on the shelf a key, opened thedesk, and drew out the letter which Crozier had kept sealed and unopenedall the years, which he had never read. 

"Do you know that?" Kitty asked, and held it out for Mrs. Crozier tosee. 

Two dark blue eyes stared confusedly at the letter--at her ownhandwriting. Kitty turned it over. "You see it is closed as it was whenyou sent it to him. He has never opened it. He does not know what is init. "

"He has-kept it--five years--unopened, " Mona said in broken phrasesscarce above a whisper. 

"He has never opened it, as you see. "

"Give--give it to me, " the wife said, stepping forward to stay Kitty'shand as she opened the lid of the desk to replace the letter. 

"It's not your letter--no, you shall not, " said Kitty firmly as shejerked aside the hand laid upon her wrist, and threw one arm on the lid, holding it down as Mrs. Crozier tried to keep it open. Then with aswift action of the free hand she locked the desk and put the key in herpocket. 

"If you destroyed this letter he would never believe but that it wasworse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman tohave written to her husband--or to any one else's husband. You thoughtyou were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without apenny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are onlya pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot ofherself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter. "

"How do you know what is in it?" There was agony and challenge at oncein the other's voice. "Because I read it--oh, don't look so shocked! I'ddo it again. I knew just how to act when I'd read it. I steamed it openand closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I'm not sorry I did it. My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to understandeverything, so that I'd know best what to do. Though he's so far aboveus in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own. That's theway it is in new countries like this. We don't think of lots of thingsthat you finer people in the old countries do, and we don't thinkevil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among thepioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty yearsold, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had totake each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr. Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life--nota boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed youin the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eatyour meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as amatter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this outhere--don't you understand?"

"I am trying hard to do so, " was the reply in a hushed voice. Here wasa world, here were people of whom Mona Crozier had never dreamed. Theywere so much of an antique time--far behind the time that her old landrepresented; not a new world, but the oldest world of all. She began tounderstand the girl also, and her face took on a comprehending look, aswith eyes like bronze suns Kitty continued:

"So, though it was wrong--wicked--in one way, I read the letter, to dosome good by it, if it could be done. If I hadn't read it you wouldn'tbe here. Was it worth while?"

At that moment there was a knock at the outer door of the other room, or, rather, on the lintel of it. Mona started. Suppose it was herhusband--that was her thought. 

Kitty read the look. "No, it isn't Mr. Crozier. It's the Young Doctor. Iknow his knock. Will you come and see him?"

The wife was trembling, she was very pale, her eyes were rather staring, but she fought to control herself. It was evident that Kitty expectedher to do so. It was also quite certain that Kitty meant to settlethings now, in so far as it could be done. 

"He knows as much as you do?" asked Mrs. Crozier. 

"No, the Young Doctor hasn't read the letter and I haven't told himwhat's in it; but he knows that I read it, and what he doesn't know heguesses. He is Mr. Crozier's honest, clever friend. I've got an idea--aninvention to put this thing right. It's a good one. You'll see. But Iwant the Young Doctor to know about it. He never has to think twice. Heknows what to do the very first time. "

A moment later they were in the other room, with the Young Doctorsmiling down at "the little spot of a woman, " as he called Crozier'swife. 

CHAPTER XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT

"You look quite settled and at home, " the Young Doctor remarked, as heoffered Mrs. Crozier a chair. She took it, for never in her life hadshe felt so small physically since coming to the great, new land. Theislands where she was born were in themselves so miniature thatthe minds of their people, however small, were not made to feelinsignificant. But her mind, which was, after all, vastly larger inproportion than the body enshrining it, felt suddenly that bothwere lost in a universe. Her impulse was to let go and sink into thehelplessness of tears, to be overwhelmed by an unconquerable loneliness;but the Celtic courage in her, added to that ancient native pride whichprevents one woman from giving way before another woman towards whomshe bears jealousy, prevented her from showing the weakness she felt. Instead, it roused her vanity and made her choose to sit down, sodisguising perceptibly the disparity of height which gave Kittyan advantage over her and made the Young Doctor like some menacingPolynesian god. 

Both these people had an influence and authority in Mona Crozier's lifewhich now outweighed the advantage wealth gave her. Her wealth had notkept her husband beside her when delicate and perfumed tyranny beganto flutter its banners of control over him. Her fortune had driven himforth when her beauty and her love ought to have kept him close to her, whatever fate might bring to their door, or whatever his misfortune orthe catastrophe falling on him. It was all deeply humiliating, and theinward dejection made her now feel that her body was the last effort ofa failing creative power. So she sat down instead of standing up in avain effort at retrieval. 

The Young Doctor sat down also, but Kitty did not, and in her buoyantyouth and command of the situation she seemed Amazonian to Mona's eyes. It must be said for Kitty that she remained standing only because arestlessness had seized her which was not present when she was with Monain Crozier's room. It was now as though something was going to happenwhich she must face standing; as though something was coming out ofthe unknown and forbidding future and was making itself felt before itstime. Her eyes were almost painfully bright as she moved about the roomdoing little things. Presently she began to lay a cloth and placedishes silently on the table--long before the proper time, as her motherreminded her when she entered for a moment and then quickly passed oninto the kitchen, at a warning glance from Kitty, which said that theYoung Doctor and Mona were not to be disturbed. 

"Well, Askatoon is a place where one feels at home quickly, " addedthe Young Doctor, as Mona did not at once respond to his first remark. "Every one who comes here always feels as though he--or she--owns theplace. It's the way the place is made. The trouble with most of us isthat we want to put the feeling into practice and take possession of'all and sundry. ' Isn't that true, Miss Tynan?"

"As true as most things you say, " retorted Kitty, as she flicked thewhite tablecloth. "If mother and I hadn't such wonderful good health Isuppose you'd come often enough here to give you real possession. Do youknow, Mrs. Crozier, " she added, with her wistful eyes vainly trying tobe merely mischievous, "he once charged me five dollars for torturingme like a Red Indian. I had put my elbow out of joint, and he put itin again with his knee and both hands, as though it was the wheel of awagon and he was trying to put on the tire. "

"Well, you were running round soon after, " answered the Young Doctor. "But as for the five dollars, I only took it to keep you quiet. So longas you had a grievance you would talk and talk and talk, and you neverwere so astonished in your life as when I took that five dollars. "

"I've taken care never to dislocate my elbow since. "

"No, not your elbow, " remarked the Young Doctor meaningly, and turned toMona, who had now regained her composure. 

"Well, I shan't call you in to reduce the dislocation--that's themedical term, isn't it?" persisted Kitty, with fire in her eyes. 

"What is the dislocation?" asked Mona, with a subtle, inquiring look buta manner which conveyed interest. 

The Young Doctor smiled. "It's only her way of saying that my mind isunhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private hospital for two. "

"No--only one, " returned Kitty. 

"Marriage means common catastrophe, doesn't it?" he asked quizzically. 

"Generally it means that one only is permanently injured, " repliedKitty, lifting a tumbler and looking through it at him as though to seeif the glass was properly polished. 

Mona was mystified. At first she thought there had been obliquereferences to her husband, but these remarks about marriage wouldcertainly exclude him. Yet, would they exclude him? During the time inwhich Shiel's history was not known might there not have been--but no, it could not have been so, for it was Kitty who had sent the letterwhich had brought her to Askatoon. 

"Are you to be married--soon?" she asked of Kitty, with a friendly yettrembling smile, for her agitation was, despite appearances, troublingevery nerve. 

"I've thought of it quite lately, " responded Kitty calmly, seatingherself now and looking straight into the eyes of the woman, who wassuggesting more truth than she knew. 

"May I congratulate you? Am I justified on such slight acquaintance? Iam sure you have chosen wisely, " was the smooth rejoinder. 

Kitty did not shrink from looking Mona in the eyes. "It isn't quite timefor congratulations yet, and I'm not sure I've chosen wisely. My familyvery strongly disapproves. I can't help that, of course, and I may haveto elope and take the consequences. "

"It takes two to elope, " interposed the Young Doctor, who thought thatKitty, in her humorous extravagance, was treading very dangerous groundindeed. He was thinking of Crozier and Kitty; but Kitty was thinkingof Crozier, and meaning John Sibley. Somehow she could not help playingwith this torturing thing in the presence of the wife of the man who wasthe real "man in possession" so far as her life was concerned. 

"Why, he is waiting on the doorstep, " replied Kitty boldly and referringonly to John Sibley. 

At that minute there was the crunch of gravel on the pathway and thesound of a quick footstep. Kitty and Mona were on their feet at once. Both recognised the step of Shiel Crozier. Presently the Young Doctorrecognised it also, but he rose with more deliberation. 

At that instant a voice calling from the road arrested Crozier's advanceto the open door of the room where they were. It was Jesse Bulrushasking a question. Crozier paused in his progress, and in the moment'stime it gave, Kitty, with a swift look of inquiry and with a burst ofthe real soul in her, caught the hand of Crozier's wife and pressed itwarmly. Then, with a face flushed and eyes that looked straight aheadof her, she left the room as the Young Doctor went to the doorway andstepped outside. Within ten feet of the door he met Crozier. 

"How goes it, patient?" he said, standing in Crozier's way. Being a manwho thought much and wisely for other people, he wanted to give the wifetime to get herself in control. 

"Right enough in your sphere of operations, " answered Crozier. 

"And not so right in other fields, eh?"

"I've come back after a fruitless hunt. They've got me, the thieves!"said Crozier, with a look which gave his long face an almost tragicausterity. Then suddenly the look changed, the mediaeval remotenesspassed, and a thought flashed up into his eyes which made his expressionalive with humour. 

"Isn't it wonderful, that just when a man feels he wants a rope to hanghimself with, the rope isn't to be had?" he exclaimed. "Before he canlay his hands on it he wants to hang somebody else, and then he has topause whether he will or no. Did I ever tell you the story of the oldIrishwoman who lived down at Kenmare, in Kerry? Well, she used to sit ather doorway and lament the sorrows of the world with a depth of passionthat you'd think never could be assuaged. 'Oh, I fale so bad, I am sowake--oh, I do fale so bad, ' she used to say. 'I wish some wan wouldtake me by the ear and lade me round to the ould shebeen, and set medown, and fill a noggen of whusky and make me dhrink it--whether I wouldor no!' Whether I would or no I have to drink the cup of self-denial, "Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every dooragainst me here, and I've come back without what I went for at AspenVale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for, but I must just grin and bear it. " He shrugged his shoulders and gave agreat sigh. 

"Perhaps you'll find what you went for here, " returned the Young Doctormeaningly. 

"There's a lot here--enough to make a man think life worthwhile"--inside the room the wife shrank at the words, for she could hearall--"but just the same I'm not thinking the thing I went to look for ishereabouts. "

"You never know your luck, " was the reply. "'Ask and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. '"

The long face blazed up with humour again. "Do you mean that I haven'tasked you yet?" Crozier remarked, with a quizzical look, which had stillthat faint hope against hope which is a painful thing for a good man'seyes to see. 

The Young Doctor laid a hand on Crozier's arm. "No, I didn't mean that, patient. I'm in that state when every penny I have is out to keep mefrom getting a fall. I'm in that Starwhon coal-mine down at Bethbridge, and it's like a suction-pump. I couldn't borrow a thousand dollarsmyself now. I can't do it, or I'd stand in with you, Crozier. No, Ican't help you a bit; but step inside. There's a room in this housewhere you got back your life by the help of a knife. There's anotherroom in there where you may get back your fortune by the help of awife. "

Stepping aside he gave the wondering Crozier a slight push forward intothe doorway, then left him and hurried round to the back of the house, where he hoped he might see Kitty. 

The Young Doctor found Kitty pumping water on a pail of potatoes andstirring them with a broom-handle. 

"A most unscientific way of cleaning potatoes, " he said, as Kitty didnot look at him. "If you put them in a trough where the water could runoff, the dirt would go with the water, and you would'nt waste time andintelligence, and your fingers would be cleaner in the end. "

The only reply Kitty made was to flick the broomhead at him. It had beendipped in water, and the spray from it slightly spattered his face. 

"Will you never grow up?" he exclaimed as he applied a handkerchief tohis ruddy face. 

"I'd like you so much better if you were younger--will you never beyoung?" she asked. 

"It makes a man old before his time to have to meet you day by day andlive near you. "

"Why don't you try living with me?" she retorted. "Ah, then, you meantme when you said to Mrs. Crozier that you were going to be married?Wasn't that a bit 'momentary'? as my mother's cook used to remark. Ithink we haven't 'kept company'--you and I. "

"It's true you haven't been a beau of mine, but I'd rather marry youthan be obliged to live with you, " was the paradoxical retort. 

"You have me this time, " he said, trying in vain to solve her reply. 

Kitty tossed her head. "No, I haven't got you this time, thank Heaven, and I don't want you; but I'd rather marry you than live with you, as Isaid. Isn't it the custom for really nice-minded people to marry to getrid of each other--for five years, or for ever and ever and ever?"

"What a girl you are, Kitty Tynan!" he said reprovingly. He saw that shemeant Crozier and his wife. 

Kitty ceased her work for an instant and, looking away from him into thedistance, said: "Three people said those same words to me all in one daya thousand years ago. It was Mr. Crozier, Jesse Bulrush, and my mother;and now you've said it a thousand years after; as with your inexpensiveeducation and slow mind you'd be sure to do. "

"I have an idea that Mrs. Crozier said the same to you also this veryday. Did she--come, did she?"

"She didn't say, 'What a girl you are!' but in her mind she probably didsay, 'What a vixen!"'

The Young Doctor nodded satirically. "If you continued as you began whencoming from the station, I'm sure she did; and also I'm sure it wasn'twrong of her to say it. "

"I wanted her to say it. That's why I uttered the too, too utter-things, as the comic opera says. What else was there to do? I had to help cureher. "

"To cure her of what, miss?"

"Of herself, doctor-man. "

The Young Doctor's look became graver. He wondered greatly at this younggirl's sage instinct and penetration. "Of herself? Ah, yes, to thinkmore of some one else than herself! That is--"

"Yes, that is love, " Kitty answered, her head bent over the pail andstirring the potatoes hard. 

"I suppose it is, " he answered. 

"I know it is, " she returned. 

"Is that why you are going to be married?" he asked quizzically. 

"It will probably cure the man I marry of himself, " she retorted. "Oh, neither of us know what we are talking about--let's change the subject!"she added impatiently now, with a change of mood, as she poured thewater off the potatoes. 

There was a moment's silence in which they were both thinking of thesame thing. "I wonder how it's all going inside there?" he remarked. "Ihope all right, but I have my doubts. "

"I haven't any doubt at all. It isn't going right, " she answeredruefully; "but it has to be made go right. "

"Whom do you think can do that?"

Kitty looked him frankly and decisively in the face. Her eyes had thelook of a dreaming pietist for the moment. The deep-sea soul of herwas awake. "I can do it if they don't break away altogether at once. Ihelped her more than you think. I told her I had opened that letter. "

He gasped. "My dear girl--that letter--you told her you had done such athing, such--!"

"Don't dear girl me, if you please. I know what I am doing. I told herthat and a great deal more. She won't leave this house the woman she wasyesterday. She is having a quick cure--a cure while you wait. "

"Perhaps he is cured of her, " remarked the Young Doctor very gravely. 

"No, no, the disease might have got headway, but it didn't, " Kittyreturned, her face turned away. "He became a little better; but he wasnever cured. That's the way with a man. He can never forget a woman hehas once cared for, and he can go back to her half loving her; but itisn't the case with a woman. There's nothing so dead to a woman as a manwhen she's cured of him. The woman is never dead to the man, no matterwhat happens. "

The Young Doctor regarded her with a strange, new interest and a puzzledsurprise. "Sappho--Sappho, how did you come to know these things!" heexclaimed. "You are only a girl at best, or something of a boy-girl atworst, and yet you have, or think you have, got into those places whichare reserved for the old-timers in life's scramble. You talk like anancient dame. "

Kitty smiled, but her eyes had a slumbering look as if she was halfdreaming. "That's the mistake most of you make--men and women. There'ssuch a thing as instinct, and there's such a thing as keeping your eyesopen. "

"What did Mrs. Crozier say when you told her about opening thatfive-year-old letter? Did she hate you?"

Kitty nodded with wistful whimsicality. "For a minute she was like anindustrious hornet. Then I made her see she wouldn't have been here atall if I hadn't opened it. That made, her come down from the top ofher nest on the church-spire, and she said that, considering myopportunities, I was not such an aboriginal after all. "

"Now, look you, Saphira, prospective wife of Ananias, she didn't saythat, of course. Still, it doesn't matter, does it? The point is, suppose he opens that letter now. "

"If he does, he'll probably not go with her. It was a letter that wouldsend a man out with a scalping-knife. Still, if Mr. Crozier had hisland-deal through he might not read the letter as it really is. Hisbrain wouldn't then be grasping what his eyes saw. "

"He hasn't got his land-deal through. He told me so just now before hesaw her. "

"Then it's ora pro nobis--it's pray for us hard, " rejoined Kittysorrowfully. "Poor man from Kerry!" At that moment Mrs. Tynan came fromthe house, her face flushed, her manner slightly agitated. "John Sibleyis here, Kitty--with two saddle-horses. .. . He says you promised to ridewith him to-day. "

"I probably did, " responded Kitty calmly. "It's a good day for ridingtoo. But John will have to wait. Please tell him to come back at sixo'clock. There'll be plenty of time for an hour's ride before sundown. "

"Are you lame, dear child?" asked her mother ironically. "Because ifyou're not, perhaps you'll be your own messenger. It's no way to treat afriend--or whatever you like to call him. "

Kitty smiled tenderly at her mother. "Then would you mind telling himto come here, mother darling? I'm giving this doctor-man a prescription. Ah, please do what I ask you, mother! It is true about the prescription. It's not for himself; it's for the foreign people quarantined inside. "She nodded towards the room where Shiel Crozier and his wife wereshaping their fate. 

As her mother disappeared with a gesture of impatience and the remarkthat she washed her hands of the whole Sibley business, the Young Doctorsaid to Kitty, "What is your prescription, Ma'm'selle Saphira? Supposethey come out of quarantine with a clean bill of health?"

"If they do that you needn't make up the prescription. But if Aspen Valehasn't given him what he wanted, then Mr. Shiel Crozier will still be anexile from home and the angel in the house. "

"What is the prescription? Out with your Sibylline leaves!"

"It's in that unopened letter. When the letter is opened you'll see iteffervesce like a seidlitz powder. "

"But suppose I am not here when the letter is opened?"

"You must be here-you must. You'll stay now, if you please. "

"I'm afraid I can't. I have patients waiting. " Kitty made an impetuousgesture of command. "There are two patients here who are at the crisisof their disease. You may be wanted to save a life any minute now. "

"I thought that with your prescription you were to be the AEsculapius. "

"No, I'm only going to save the reputation of AEsculapius by giving hima prescription got from a quack to give to a goose. "

"Come, come, no names. You are incorrigible. I believe you'd have yourjoke on your death-bed. "

"I should if you were there. I should die laughing, " Kitty retorted. 

"There will be no death-bed for you, miss. You'll be translated--no, that's not right; no one could translate you. "

"God might--or a man I loved well enough not to marry him. "

There was a note of emotion in her laugh as she uttered the words. Itdid not escape the ear of the Young Doctor, who regarded her fixedlyfor a moment before he said: "I'm not sure that even He would be able totranslate you. You speak your own language, and it's surely original. Iam only just learning its alphabet. No one else speaks it. I have afear that you'll be terribly lonely as you travel along the trail, KittyTynan. "

A light of pleasure came into Kitty's eyes, though her face was a littledrawn. "You really do think I'm original--that I'm myself and not likeanybody else?" she asked him with a childlike eagerness. 

"Almost more than any one I ever met, " answered the Young Doctor gently;for he saw that she had her own great troubles, and he also felt nowfully what this comedy or tragedy inside the house meant to her. "Butyou're terribly lonely--and that's why: because you are the only one ofyour kind. "

"No, that's why I'm not going to be lonely, " she said, nodding towardsthe corner of the house where John Sibley appeared. 

Suddenly, with a gesture of confidence and almost of affection, she laida hand on the Young Doctor's breast. "I've left the trail, doctor-man. I'm cutting across the prairie. Perhaps I shall reach camp and perhapsI shan't; but anyhow I'll know that I met one good man on the way. AndI also saw a resthouse that I'd like to have stayed at, but the blindswere drawn and the door was locked. "

There was a strange, eerie look in her face again as her eyes of softumber dwelt on his for a moment; then she turned with a gay smile toJohn Sibley, who had seen her hand on the Young Doctor's chest withoutdismay; for the joy of Kitty was that she hid nothing; and, anyhow, theYoung Doctor had a place of his own; and also, anyhow, Kitty did whatshe pleased. Once when she had visited the Coast the Governor had talkedto her with great gusto and friendliness; and she had even gone so faras to touch his arm while, chuckling at her whimsically, he listenedto a story she told him of life at the rail-head. And the Governor hadpatted her fingers in quite a fatherly way--or not, as the mind of theobserver saw it; while subsequently his secretary had written verses toher. 

"So you've been gambling again--you've broken your promise to me, " shesaid reprovingly to Sibley, but with that wonderful, wistful laughter inher eyes. 

Sibley looked at her in astonishment. "Who told you?" he asked. It hadonly happened the night before, and it didn't seem possible she couldknow. 

He was quite right. It wasn't possible she could know, and she didn'tknow. She only divined. 

"I knew when you made the promise you couldn't keep it; that's why Iforgive you now, " she added. "Knowing what I did about you, I oughtn'tto have let you make it. "

The Young Doctor saw in her words a meaning that John Sibley couldnever have understood, for it was a part of the story of Crozier's lifereproduced--and with what a different ending!

CHAPTER XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM"

When Crozier stepped out of the bright sunlight into the shadyliving-room of the Tynan home, his eyes were clouded by the memory ofhis conference with Studd Bradley and his financial associates, and bythe desolate feeling that the five years since he had left England hadbrought him nothing--nothing at all except a new manhood. But that hedid not count an asset, because he had not himself taken account of thisnew capital. He had never been an introspective man in the philosophicsense, and he never had thought that he was of much account. He hadlived long on his luck, and nothing had come of it--"nothing at all, at all, " as he said to himself when he stepped inside the room where, unknown to him, his wife awaited him. So abstracted was he, so disturbedwas his gaze (fixed on the inner thing), that he did not see the figurein blue and white over against the wall, her hand on the big arm-chaironce belonging to Tyndall Tynan, and now used always by Shiel Crozier, "the white-haired boy of the Tynan sanatorium, " as Jesse Bulrush hadcalled him. 

There was a strange timidity, and a fear not so strange, in Mona'seyes as she saw her husband enter with that quick step which she had solongingly remembered after he had fled from her; but of which she hadtaken less account when he was with her at Lammis long ago-When Crozierof Lammis was with her long ago. How tall and shapely he was! How largehe loomed with the light behind him! How shadowed his face and howdistant the look in his eyes. 

Somehow the room seemed too small for him, and yet he had lived in thisvery house for four years and more; he had slept in the next room allthat time; had eaten at this table and sat in this very chair--Mrs. Tynan had told her that--for this long time, like the master of ahousehold. With that far-away, brooding look in his face, he seemed inone sense as distant from her as when she was in London in those dreary, desolate years with no knowledge of his whereabouts, a widow in everysense save one; but in her acts--that had to be said for her--a wifealways and not a widow. She had not turned elsewhere, though there hadbeen temptation enough to do so. 

Crozier advanced to the centre of the room, even to the table laid fordinner, before he was conscious of some one in the room, of a figureby the chair. For a moment he stood still, startled as if he had seen avision, and his sight became blurred. When it cleared, Mona had come astep nearer to him, and then he saw her clearly. He caught his breath asthough Life had burst upon him with some staggering revelation. If shehad been a woman of genius, as in her way Kitty Tynan was, she wouldhave spoken before he had a chance to do so. Instead, she wished to seehow he would greet her, to hear what he would say. She was afraid of himnow. It was not her gift to do the right thing by perfect instinct; shehad to think things out; and so she did now. Still it has to be saidfor her that she also had a strange, deep sense of apprehension in thepresence of the man whose arms had held her fast, and then let her gofor so bitter a length of time, in which her pride was lacerated and herheart brought low. She did not know how she was going to be met now, and a womanly shyness held her back. If she had said one word--his nameonly--it might have made a world of difference to them both at thatmoment; for he was tortured by failure, and now when hope was gone, here was the woman whom he had left in order to force gifts from fate tobring himself back to her. 

"You--you here!" he exclaimed hoarsely. He did not open his arms to heror go a step nearer to her. His look was that of blank amazement, ofmingled remembrance and stark realisation. This was a turn of affairsfor which he had made no calculation. There had ever been the questionof his return to her, but never of her coming to him. Yet here she was, debonnaire and fresh and perfectly appointed--and ah, so terribly neatand spectacularly finessed! Here she was with all that expert formalitywhich, in the old days, had been a reproach to his loosely-swung lifeand person, to his careless, almost slovenly but well-brushed, cleanly, and polished ease--not like his wife, as though he had been poured outof a mould and set up to dry. He was not tailor-made, and she had everbeen so exact that it was as though she had been crystallised, clothesand all--a perfect crystal, yet a crystal. It was this very perfection, so charming to see, but in a sense so inhuman, which had ever dismayedhim. "What should I be doing in the home of an angel!" he had exclaimedto himself in the old home at Lammis. 

Truth is, he ought never to have had such a feeling, and he would nothave had it, if she had diffused the radiance of love, which would havemade her outer perfectness mere slovenliness beside her inner charm andmagnetism. Very little of all this passed through Crozier's mind, aswith confused vision he looked at her. He had borne the ordeal of thewitness-box in the Logan Trial with superb coolness; he had been inphysical danger over and over again, and had kept his head; he had neverbeen faced by a human being who embarrassed him--except his own wife. "There is no fear like that of one's own wife, " was the saying of anancient philosopher, and Crozier had proved it true; not becauseof errors committed, but because he was as sensitive as a girl ofsensibility; because he felt that his wife did not understand him, andhe was ever in fear of doing the wrong thing, while eager beyond tellingto please her. After all, during the past five years, parted from herwhile loving her, there had still been a feeling of relief unexplainableto himself in not having to think whether he was pleasing her or not, or to reproach himself constantly that he was failing to conform to herstandard. 

"How did you come--why? How did you know?" he asked helplessly, asshe made no motion to come nearer; as she kept looking at him with anexpression in her eyes wholly unfamiliar to him. Yet it was not whollyunfamiliar, for it belonged to the days when he courted her, when sheseemed to have got nearer to him than in the more intimate relations ofmarried life. 

"Is--is that all you have to say to me, Shiel?" she asked, with aswelling note of feeling in her voice; while there was also emerging inher look an elusive pride which might quickly become sharp indignation. That her deserter should greet her so after five years of such offenceto a woman's self-respect, as might entitle her to become a rebelagainst matrimony, was too cruel to be borne. This feeling suddenlybecame alive in her, in spite of a joy in her heart different from thatwhich she had ever known; in defiance of the fact that now that theywere together once more, what would she not do to prevent their beingdriven apart again!

"After abandoning me for five years, is that all you have to say to me, Shiel? After I have suffered before the world--"

He threw up his arms with a passionate gesture. "The world!" heexclaimed--"the devil take the world! I've been out of it for fiveyears, and well out of it. What do I care for the world!"

She drew herself up in a spirit of defence. "It isn't what you carefor the world, but I had to live in it--alone, and because I was alone, eyebrows were lifted. It has been easy enough for you. You were where noone knew you. You had your freedom"--she advanced to the table, and, asthough unconsciously, he did the same, and they gazed at each other overthe white linen and its furnishings--"and no one was saying that yourwife had left you for this or that, because of her bad conduct or ofyours. Either way it was not what was fair and just; yet I had to bearand suffer, not you. There is no pain like it. There I was in miseryand--"

A bitter smile came to his lips. "A woman can endure a good deal whenshe has all life's luxuries in her grasp. Did you ever think, Mona, thata man must suffer when he goes out into a world where he knows no one, penniless, with no trade, no profession, nothing except his own helplessself? He might have stayed behind among the luxuries that belonged toanother, and eaten from the hand of his wife's charity, but"--(all thepride and pain of the old situation rose up in him, impelled by thebrooding of the years of separation, heightened by the fact that he wasno nearer to his goal of financial independence of her than he was whenhe left London five years before)--"but do you think, no matter whatI've done, broken a pledge or not, been in the wrong a thousand times asmuch as I was, that I'd be fed by the hand of one to whom I had given apledge and broken it? Do you think that I'd give her the chance to say, or not to say, but only think, 'I forgive you; I will give you your foodand clothes and board and bed, but if you are not good in the future, Iwill be very, very angry with you'? Do you think--?"

His face was flaming now. The pent-up flood of remorse and resentmentand pride and love--the love that tore itself in pieces because ithad not the pride and self-respect which independence as to moneygives--broke forth in him, fresh as he was from a brutal interview withthe financial clique whom he had given the chance to make much money, and who were now, for a few thousand dollars, trying to cudgel him outof his one opportunity to regain his place in his lost world. 

"I live--I live like this, " he continued, with a gesture that embracedthe room where they were, "and I have one room to myself where I havelived over four years"--he pointed towards it. "Do you think I wouldchoose this and all it means--its poverty and its crudeness, itsdistance from all I ever had and all my people had, if I could havestood the other thing--a pauper taking pennies from his own wife? I hadhad taste enough of it while I had a little something left; but whenI lost everything on Flamingo, and I was a beggar, I knew I could notstand the whole thing. I could not, would not, go under the poor-lawand accept you, with the lash of a broken pledge in your hand, as myguardian. So that's why I left, and that's why I stay here, and that'swhy I'm going to stay here, Mona. "

He looked at her firmly, though his face had that illumination whichthe spirit in his eyes--the Celtic fire drawn through the veins of hisancestors--gave to all he did and felt; and now as in a dream he sawlittle things in her he had never seen before. He saw that a littlestrand of her beautiful dark hair had broken away from its orderedplace and hung prettily against the rosy, fevered skin of her cheek justbeside her ear. He saw that there were no rings on her fingers save one, and that was her wedding-ring--and she had always been fond of wearingrings. He noted, involuntarily, that in her agitation the white tulleat her bosom had been disturbed into pretty disarray, and that there wasneither brooch nor necklace at her breast or throat. 

"If you stay, I am going to stay too, " she declared in an almostpassionate voice, and she spoke with deliberation and a look which leftno way open to doubt. She was now a valiant little figure making a fightfor happiness. 

"I can't prevent that, " he responded stubbornly. 

She made a quick, appealing motion of her hands. "Would you prevent it?Aren't you glad to see me? Don't you love me any more? You used tolove me. In spite of all, you used to love me. Even though you hated mymoney, and I hated your gambling--your betting on horses. You used tolove me--I was sure you did then. Don't you love me now, Shiel?"

A gloomy look passed over his face. Memory of other days was admonishinghim. "What is the good of one loving when the other doesn't? And, anyhow, I made up my mind five years ago that I would not live on mywife. I haven't done so, and I don't mean to 'do so. I don't mean totake a penny of your money. I should curse it to damnation if I wasliving on it. I'm not, and I don't mean to do so. "

"Then I'll stay here and work too, without it, " she urged, with a lightin her eyes which they had never known. 

He laughed mirthlessly. "What could you do--you never did a day's workin your life!"

"You could teach me how, Shiel. "

His jaw jerked in a way it had when he was incredulous. "You used tosay I was only--mark you, only a dreamer and a sportsman. Well, I'm nolonger a dreamer and a sportsman; I'm a practical man. I've done withdreaming and sportsmanship. I can look at a situation as it is, and--"

"You are dreaming--but yes, you are dreaming still, " she interjected. "And you are a sportsman still, but it is the sport of a dreamer, and amad dreamer too. Shiel, in spite of all my faults in the past, I cometo you, to stay with you, to live on what you earn if you like, if it'sonly a loaf of bread a day. I--I don't care about my money. I don't careabout the luxuries which money can buy; I can do without them if I haveyou. Am I not to stay, and won't you--won't you kiss me, Shiel?"

She came close to him-came round the table till she stood within a fewfeet of him. 

There was one trembling instant when he would have taken her hungrilyinto his arms, but as if some evil spirit interposed with malignpurpose, there came the sound of feet on the gravel outside, and thefigure of a man darkened the doorway. It was Augustus Burlingame, whoseface as he saw Mona Crozier took on an ironical smile. 

"Yes--what do you want?" inquired Crozier quietly. "A few words with Mr. Crozier on business, if he is not too much occupied?"

"What business?"

"I am acting for Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons. "

The cloud darkened on Crozier's face. His lips tightened, his facehardened. "I will see you in a moment--wait outside, please, " he added, as Burlingame made as though to step inside. "Wait at the gate, " headded quietly, but with undisguised contempt. 

The moment of moments for Mona and himself had passed. All thebitterness of defeat was on him again. All the humiliation of undeservedfailure to accomplish what had been the dear desire of five years boredown his spirit now. Suddenly he had a suspicion that his wife hadreceived information of his whereabouts from this very man, Burlingame. Had not the Young Doctor said that Burlingame had written to lawyersin the old land to get information concerning him? Was it not more thanlikely that he had given his wife the knowledge which had brought herhere?

When Burlingame had disappeared he turned to Mona. "Who told you I washere? Who wrote to you?" he asked darkly. The light had died away fromhis face. It was ascetic in its lonely gravity now. 

"Your doctor cabled to Castlegarry and Miss Tynan wrote to me. "

A faint flush spread over Crozier's face. "How did Miss Tynan know whereto write?"

Mona had told the truth at once because she felt it was the only way. Now, however, she was in a position where she must either tell him thatKitty had opened that still sealed letter from herself to him which hehad carried all these years, or else tell him an untruth. She had noright to tell him what Kitty had confided to her. There was no other waysave to lie. 

"How should I know? It was enough for me to get her letter, " shereplied. 

"At Castlegarry?"

What was there to do? She must keep faith with Kitty, who had given herthis sight of her husband again. 

"Forwarded from Lammis, " she said. "It reached me before the doctor'scable. "

So it was Kitty--Kitty Tynan-who had brought his wife to this new homefrom which he had been trying so hard to get back to the old home. Kitty, the angel of the house. 

"You wrote me a letter which drove me from home, " he said heavily. 

"No--no--no, " she protested. "It was not that. I know it was not that. It was my money--it was that which drove you away. You have just saidso. "

"You wrote me a hateful letter, " he persisted. "You didn't want to seeme. You sent it to me by your sweet, young brother. "

Her eyes flashed. "My letter did not drive you away. It couldn't have. You went because you did not love me. It was that and my money, not theletter, not the letter. "

Somehow she had a curious feeling that the very letter which containedher bitter and hateful reproaches might save her yet. The fact that hehad not opened it--well, she must see Kitty again. Her husband was in adark mood. She must wait. She knew that her fortunate moment had passedwhen the rogue Burlingame appeared. She must wait for another. 

"Shall I go now? You want to see that man outside. Shall I go, Shiel?"She was very pale, very quiet, steady and gentle. 

"I must hear what that fellow has to say. It is business--important, " hereplied. "It may mean anything--everything, or nothing. "

As she left the room he had an impulse to call her back, but heconquered it. 

CHAPTER XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU SHALL GO BACK FOR MINE"

For a moment Crozier stood looking at the closed doorway through whichMona had gone, with a look of repentant affection in his eyes; but asthe thought of his own helpless insolvency and broken hopes flashedacross his mind, a look of dark and harassed reflection shadowedhis face. He turned to the front doorway with a savage gesture. Themutilated dignity of his manhood, the broken pride of a lifetime, thebitterness in his heart need not be held in check in dealing with theman who waited to give him a last thrust of enmity. 

He left the house. Burlingame was seated on the stump of a tree whichhad been made into a seat. "Come to my room if you have business withme, " Crozier said sharply. 

As they went, Crozier swung aside from the front door towards the cornerof the house. 

"The back way?" asked Burlingame with a sneer. 

"The old familiar way to you, " was the smarting reply. "In any case, youare not welcome in Mrs. Tynan's part of the house. My room is my own, however, and I should prefer you within four walls while doing businesswith you. "

Burlingame's face changed colour slightly, for the tone of Crozier'svoice, the grimness of his manner, suggested an abnormal condition. Burlingame was not a brave man physically. He had never lived theoutdoor life, though he had lived so much among outdoor people. He wasthat rare thing in a new land, a decadent, a connoisseur in vice, a lover of opiates and of liquor. He was young enough yet not to beincapacitated by it. His face and hands were white and a little flabby, and he wore his hair rather long, which, it is said, accounts forthe weakness of some men, on the assumption that long hair wastesthe strength. But Burlingame quickly remembered the attitude of thelady--Crozier's wife, he was certain--and of Crozier in thedining-room a few moments before, and to his suspicious eyes it wasnot characteristic of a happy family party. No doubt this grimness ofCrozier was due to domestic trouble and not wholly to his own presence. Still, he felt softly for the tiny pistol he always carried in his bigwaistcoat pocket, and it comforted him. 

Beyond the corner of the house Crozier paused and took a key from hispocket. It opened a side door to his own room, seldom used, since itwas always so pleasant in this happy home to go through the mainliving-room, which every one liked so much that, though it was not thedining-room, it was generally used as such, and though it was not theparlour, it was its frequent substitute. Opening the door, Crozierstepped aside to let Burlingame pass. It was two years since Burlingamehad been in this room, and then he had entered it without invitation. His inquisitiveness had led him to explore it with no good intent whenhe lived in the house. 

Entering now, he gave it quick scrutiny. It was clear he was lookingfor something in particular. He was, in fact, searching for signs of itsoccupancy by another than Shiel Crozier--tokens of a woman's presence. There was, however, no sign at all of that, though there were signs ofa woman's care and attention in a number of little things--homelike, solicitous, perhaps affectionate care and attention. Certainly thespotless pillows, the pretty curtains, the pincushion, and charminglyvalanced bed and shelves, cheap though the material was, showed awoman's very friendly care. When he lived in that house there were nosuch little attentions paid to him! It was his experience that wheresuch attentions went something else went with them. A sensualisthimself, it was not conceivable to him that men and women could be underthe same roof without "passages of sympathetic friendship and tokens ofaffinity. " That was a phrase he had frequently used when pursuing hisown sort of happiness. 

His swift scrutiny showed that Crozier's wife had no habitation here, and that gave him his cue for what the French call "the reconstructionof the crime. " It certainly was clear that, as he had suggested at theLogan Trial, there was serious trouble in the Crozier family of two, andthe offender must naturally be the man who had flown, not the woman whohad stayed. Here was circumstantial evidence. 

His suggestive glance, the look in his eyes, did not escape Crozier, who read it all aright; and a primitive expression of natural antipathypassed across his mediaeval face, making it almost inquisitorial. 

"Will you care to sit?" he said, however, with the courtesy he couldnever avoid; and he pointed to a chair beside the little table in thecentre of the room. As Burlingame sat down he noticed on the table acrumpled handkerchief. It had lettering in the corner. He spread it outslightly with his fingers, as though abstractedly thinking of what hewas about to say. The initial in the corner was K. Kitty had left iton the table while she was talking to Mrs. Crozier a halfhour before. Whatever Burlingame actually thought or believed, he could not nowresist picking up the handkerchief and looking at it with a mockingsmile. It was too good a chance to waste. He still hugged to his evilheart the humiliating remembrance of his expulsion from this house, theshare Crozier had had in it, and the things which Crozier had saidto him then. He had his enemy now between the upper and the nethermill-stones, and he meant to grind him to the flour of utter abasement. It was clear that the arrival of Mrs. Crozier had brought him no relief, for Crozier's face was not that of a man who had found and opened acasket of good fortune. 

"Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man, " he said, picking up the handkerchief and looking suggestively from the letteringin the corner to Crozier. He laid it down again, smiling detestably. 

Crozier calmly picked up the handkerchief, saw the lettering, then wentquietly to the door of the room and called Mrs. Tynan's name. Presentlyshe appeared. Crozier beckoned her into the room. When she entered, heclosed the door behind her. 

"Mrs. Tynan, " he said, "this fellow found your daughter's handkerchiefon my table, and he has said regarding it, 'Rather dangerous that, inthe bedroom of a family man. ' What would you like me to do with him?"

Mrs. Tynan walked up to Burlingame with the look of a woman of theCommune and said: "If I had a son I would disown him if he didn't mangleyou till your wife would never know you again, you loathesome thing. There isn't a man or woman in Askatoon who'd believe your sickeningslanders, for every one knows what you are. How dare you enter thishouse? If the men of Askatoon had any manhood in them they wouldtar-and-feather you. My girl is as good as any girl that ever lived, andyou know it. Now go out of here--now!"

Crozier intervened quietly. "Mrs. Tynan, I asked him in here becauseit is my room. I have some business with him. When it is over, then heshall go, and we will fumigate the place. As for the tar-and-feathers, you might leave that to me. I think I can arrange it. 

"I'll turn the hose on him as he goes out, if you don't mind, " the iratemother exclaimed as she left the room. 

Crozier nodded. "Well, that would be appropriate, Mrs. Tynan, but itwouldn't cleanse him. He is the original leopard whose spots are therefor ever. "

By this time Burlingame was on his feet, and a look of craft and fearand ugly meaning was in his face. Morally he was a coward, physically hewas a coward, but he had in his pocket a weapon which gave him afeeling of superiority in the situation; and after a night of extremeself-indulgence he was in a state of irritation of the nerves which gavehim what the searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and actscall "brain-storms. " He had had sense enough to know that his amorousescapades would get him into trouble one day, and he had always carriedthe little pistol which was now so convenient to his hand. It gave hima fictitious courage which he would not have had unarmed against almostany man--or woman--in Askatoon. 

"You get a woman to do your fighting for you, " he said hatefully. "Youhave to drag her in. It was you I meant to challenge, not the poorgirl young enough to be your daughter. " His hand went to his waistcoatpocket. Crozier saw and understood. 

Suddenly Crozier's eyes blazed. The abnormal in him--the Celtic strainalways at variance with the normal, an almost ultra-natural attendantof it awoke like a tempest in the tropics. His face became transformed, alive with a passion uncanny in its recklessness and purpose. It was abrain-storm indeed, but it had behind it a normal power, a moral forcewhich was not to be resisted. 

"None of your sickly melodrama here. Take out of your pocket the pistolyou carry and give it to me, " Crozier growled. "You are not tobe trusted. The habit of thinking you would shoot somebody sometime--somebody you had injured--might become too much for you to-day, and then I should have to kill you, and for your wife's sake I don'twant to do that. I always feel sorry for a woman with a husband likeyou. You could never shoot me. You couldn't be quick enough, but youmight try. Then I should end you, and there'd be another trial; but thelawyer who defended me would not have to cross-examine any witnessabout your character. It is too well-known, Burlingame. Out with it--thepistol!" he added, standing menacingly over the other. 

In a kind of stupor, under the storm that was breaking above him, Burlingame slowly drew out of a capacious waistcoat pocket a tiny butpowerful pistol of the most modern make. 

"Put it in my hand, " insisted Crozier, his eyes on the other's. 

The flabby hand laid the weapon in Crozier's lean and strenuous fingers. Crozier calmly withdrew the cartridges and then tossed the weapon backon the table. 

"Now we have equality of opportunity, " he remarked quietly. "If youthink you would like to repeat any slander that's slid off your foultongue, do it now; and in a moment or two Mrs. Tynan can turn the hoseon the floor of this room. "

"I want to get to business, " said Burlingame sullenly, as he took fromhis pocket a paper. 

Crozier nodded. "I can imagine your haste, " he remarked. "You need allthe fees you can get to pay Belle Bingley's bills. "

Burlingame did not wince. He made no reply to the challenge that he wasthe chief supporter of a certain wanton thereabouts. 

"The time for your option to take ten thousand dollars' worth of sharesin the syndicate is up, " he said; "and I am instructed to inform youthat Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons propose to take overyour unpaid shares and to complete the transaction without you. "

"Who informed Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons that I amnot prepared to pay for my shares?" asked Crozier sharply. 

"The time is up, " surlily replied Burlingame. "It is assumed you can'ttake up your shares, and that you don't want to do so. The time us up, "he added emphatically, and he tapped the paper spread before him on thetable. 

Crozier's eyes half closed in an access of stubbornness and hatred. "You are not to assume anything whatever, " he declared. "You are toaccommodate yourself to actual facts. The time is not up. It is not uptill midnight, and any action taken before then on any other assumptionwill give grounds for damages. "

Crozier spoke without passion and with a coldblooded insistence not loston Burlingame. Taking down a calendar from the wall, he laid it besidethe paper on the table before the too eager lawyer. "Examine the dates, "he said. "At twelve o'clock tonight Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons are free to act, if the money is not at the disposal of thesyndicate by then; but till then my option is indefeasible. Does thatmeet the case or not?"

"It meets the case, " said Burlingame in a morose voice, rising. "Ifyou can produce the money before the stroke of midnight, why can't youproduce it now? What's the use of bluffing! It can't do any good in theend. Your credit--"

"My credit has been stopped by your friends, " interrupted Crozier, "butmy resources are current. "

"Midnight is not far off, " viciously remarked Burlingame as he made forthe door. 

Crozier intercepted him. "One word with you on another business beforeyou go, " he said. "The tar-and-feathers for which Mrs. Tynan asks willbe yours at any moment I raise my hand in Askatoon. There are enoughwomen alone who would do it. "

"Talk of that after midnight, " sneered Burlingame desperately as thedoor was opened for him by Crozier. "Better not go out by the frontgate, " remarked Crozier scornfully. "Mrs. Tynan is a woman of her word, and the hose is handy. "

A moment later, with contemptuous satisfaction, he saw Burlingame climbthe picket-fence at the side of the house. 

Turning back into the room, he threw up his arms. "Midnight--midnight--my God, where am I to get the money! I must--I musthave it. .. It's the only way back. "

Sitting down at the table, he dropped his head into his hands and shuthis eyes in utter dejection. "Mona--by Heaven, no, I'll never take itfrom her!" he said once, and clenched his hands at his temples and saton and on unmoving. 

CHAPTER XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT?

For a full half-hour Crozier sat buried in dark reflection, then heslowly raised his head, and for a minute looked round dazedly. Hisabsorption had been so great that for a moment he was like one who hadawakened upon unfamiliar things. As when in a dream of the night thehistory of years will flash past like a ray of light, so for the badhalf-hour in which Crozier had given himself up to despair, his mind hadtravelled through an incongruous series of incidents of his past life, and had also revealed pictures of solution after solution of his presenttroubles. 

He had that-gift of visualization which makes life an endless processionof pictures which allure, or which wear the nature into premature oldage. The last picture flashing before his eyes, as he sat therealone, was of himself and his elder brother, Garnett, now master ofCastlegarry, racing ponies to reach the lodge-gates before they closedfor the night, after a day of disobedience and truancy. He rememberedhow Garnett had given him the better pony of the two, so that theyounger brother, who would be more heavily punished if they were lockedout, should have the better chance. Garnett, if odd in manner andcharacter, had always been a true sportsman though not a lover of sport. 

If--if--why had he never thought of Garnett? Garnett could help him, andhe would do so. He would let Garnett stand in with him--take one-thirdof his profits from the syndicate. Yes, he must ask Garnett to see himthrough. Then it was that he lifted his head from his hands, and hismind awakened out of a dream as real as though he had actually beenasleep. Garnett--alas! Garnett was thousands of miles away, and hehad not heard from him for five years. Still, he knew the master ofCastlegarry was alive, for he had seen him mentioned in a chance numberof The Morning Post lately come to his hands. What avail! Garnett was atCastlegarry, and at midnight his chance of fortune and a new life wouldbe gone. Then, penniless, he would have to face Mona again; and whatwould come of that he could not see, would not try to see. There was analternative he would not attempt to face until after midnight, when thiscrisis in his life would be over. Beyond midnight was a darkness whichhe would not now try to pierce. As his eyes again became used to hissurroundings, a look of determination, the determination of the truegambler, came into his face. The real gambler never throws up the spongetill all is gone; never gives up till after the last toss of the lastpenny of cash or credit; for he has seen such innumerable times thething come right and good fortune extend a friendly hand with the lasthazard of all. 

Suddenly he remembered--saw--a scene in the gambling rooms at MonteCarlo on the only visit he had ever paid to the place. He had playedconstantly, and had won more or less each day. Then his fortune turnedand he lost and lost each day. At last, one evening, he walked up to atable and said to the croupier, "When was zero up last?" The croupieranswered, "Not for an hour. " Forthwith he began to stake on zero and onnothing else. For two hours he put his louis at each turn of the wheelon the Lonely Nought. For two hours he lost. Increasing his stake, whichhad begun at five francs and had risen at length to five louis, he stillcoaxed the sardonic deity. Finally midnight came, and he was the onlyperson playing at the table. All others had gone or had ceased to play. These stayed to watch the "mad Inglesi, " as a foreigner called him, knocking his head against the foot stool of an unresponsive god ofchance. The croupiers watched also with somewhat disdainful, somewhatpitying interest, this last representative of a class who have an insanenotion that the law of chances is in their favour if they can but staythe course. And how often had they seen the stubborn challenger of ablack demon, who would not appear according to the law of chances, leavethe table ruined for ever!

Smiling, Crozier had played on till he had but ten louis left. Countingthem over with cheerful exactness, he rose up, lit a cigarette, placedthe ten louis on the fatal spot with cynical precision, and with a gaysmile kissed his hand to the refractory Nothing and said, "You've gotit all, Zero-good-night! Goodnight, Zero!" Then he had buttoned his coatand turned away to seek the cool air of the Mediterranean. He had gonebut a step or two, his head half gaily turned to the table where thedwindling onlookers stood watching the wheel spin round, when suddenlythe croupier's cry of "Zero!" fell upon his ears. 

With cheerful nonchalance he had come back to the table and pickedup the many louis he had won--won by his last throw and with his lastavailable coin. 

As the scene passed before him now he got to his feet and, with thatlook of the visionary in his eyes, which those only know who havewatched the born gamester, said, "I'll back my hand till the lastthrow. " Then it was, as his eyes gazed in front of him dreamily, he sawthe card on his mirror bearing the words, "Courage, soldier!"

With a deepening flame in his eyes he went over and gazed at it. Atlength he reached out and touched the writing with a caressing finger. 

"Kitty--Kitty, how great you are!" he said. Then as he turned to theouter door a softness came into his face, stole up into his brillianteyes and dimmed them with a tear. "What a hand to hold in the dark--thedark of life!" he said aloud. "Courage, soldier!" he added, as he openedthe door by which he had entered, through which Burlingame had gone, andstrode away towards the town of Askatoon, feeling somehow in his heartthat before midnight his luck would turn. 

From the dining-room Kitty had watched him go. "Courage, soldier!" shewhispered after him, and she laughed; but almost immediately she threwher head up with a gasping sigh, and when it was lowered again two tearswere stealing down her cheeks. 

With an effort she conquered herself, wiped away the tears, and saidaloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach, "Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a fool you are!"

Entering the room Crozier had left, she went to the desk with thegreen-baize top, opened it, and took out the fateful letter which MonaCrozier had written to her husband five years ago. Putting it into herpocket she returned to the dining-room. She stood there for a momentwith her chin in her hands and deep reflection in her eyes, and then, going to the door of her mother's sitting-room, she opened it andbeckoned. A moment later Mrs. Crozier and the Young Doctor entered thedining-room and sat down at a motion from her. Presently she said:

"Mrs. Crozier, I have here the letter your husband received from youfive years ago in London. "

Mrs. Crozier flushed. She had been masterful by nature and she had hadher way very much in life. To be dominated in the most intimate thingsof her life by this girl was not easy to be borne; but she realised thatKitty had been a friend indeed, even if not conventional. In response toKitty's remark now she inclined her head. 

"Well, you have told us that you and your husband haven't made it up. That is so, isn't it?" Kitty continued. 

"If you wish to put it that way, " answered Mona, stiffening a little inspite of herself. 

"P'r'aps I don't put it very well, but it is the stony fact, isn't it, Mrs. Crozier?"

Mona hesitated a moment, then answered: "He is very upset concerningthe land syndicate, and he has a quixotic idea that he cannot take moneyfrom me to help him carry it through. "

"I don't quite know what quixotic means, " rejoined Kitty dryly. "If itwasn't understood while you lived together that what was one's was theother's, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes tothe name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don't see how you couldexpect him, after your five years' desertion, to take money from younow. "

"My five years' desertion!" exclaimed Mona. Surely this girl was morethan reckless in her talk. Kitty was not to be put down. "If you don'tmind plain speaking, he was always with you, but you weren't alwayswith him in those days. This letter showed that. " She tapped it on herthumb-nail. "It was only when he had gone and you saw what you had lost, that you came back to him--in heart, I mean. Well, if you didn't go awaywith him when he went, and you wouldn't have gone unless he had orderedyou to go--and he wouldn't do that--it's clear you deserted him, sinceyou did that which drove him from home, and you stayed there instead ofgoing with him. I've worked it out, and it is certain you deserted himfive years ago. Desertion doesn't mean a sea of water between, it meansan ocean of self-will and love-me-first between. If you hadn't desertedhim, as this letter shows, he wouldn't have been here. I expect he toldyou so; and if he did, what did you say to him?"

The Young Doctor's eyes were full of decorous mirth and apprehension, for such logic and such impudence as Kitty's was like none he had everheard. Yet it was commanding too. 

Kitty caught the look in his eyes and blazed up. "Isn't what I saidcorrect? Isn't it all true and logical? And if it is, why do you sitthere looking so superior?"

The Young Doctor made a gesture of deprecating apology. "It's all true, and it's logical, too, if you stand on your head when you think it. Butwhether it is logical or not, it is your conclusion, and as you've takenthe thing in hand to set it right, it is up to you now. We can only holdhard and wait. "

With a shrug of her graceful shoulders Kitty turned again to Mrs. Crozier, who intervened hastily, saying, "I did not have a chance ofsaying to him all I wished. Of course he could not take my money, butthere was his own money! I was going to tell him about that, but justthen the lawyer, Mr. Burlingame--"

"They all call him 'Gus' Burlingame. He doesn't get the civility of Mr. Here in Askatoon, " interposed Kitty. 

Mona made an impatient gesture. "If you will listen, I want to tell youabout Mr. Crozier's money. He thinks he has no money, but he has. He hasa good deal. "

She paused, and the Young Doctor and Kitty leaned forward eagerly. "Well, but go on, " said Kitty. "If he has money he must have it to-day, and now. Certainly he doesn't know of it. He thinks he is broke, --deadbroke, --and there'd be a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for him ifhe could put up ten thousand dollars to-night. If I were you I wouldn'thide it from him any longer. "

Mona got to her feet in anger. "If you would give me a chance toexplain, I would do so, " she said, her lips trembling. "Unfortunately, I am in your hands, but please give me credit for some intelligence--andsome heart. In any case I shall not be bullied. "

The Young Doctor almost laughed outright, despite the danger of thesituation. He was not prepared for Kitty's reply and the impulsive actthat marched with it. In an instant Kitty had caught Mona Crozier's handand pressed it warmly. "I was only doing what I've seen lawyers do, " shesaid eagerly. "I've got something that I want you to do, and I've beentrying to work up to it. That's all. I'm not as mean and bad manneredas you think me. I really do care what happens to him--to you both, " shehastened to add. 

Struggling to keep back her tears, and in a low voice, Mona rejoined:"I meant to have told him what I'm going to tell you now. I couldn'tsay anything about the money belonging to him till I had told him how itcame to be his. "

After a moment' pause she continued: "He told you all about the racewhich Flamingo lost, and about that letter. " She pointed to the letterwhich Kitty still carried in her hand. "Well, that letter was writtenunder the sting of bitter disappointment. I was vain. I was young. I didnot understand as I do now. If you were not such good friends--of his--Icould not tell you this. It seemed to me that by breaking his pledge heshowed he did not care for me; that he thought he could break a sacredpledge to me, and it didn't matter. I thought it was treating melightly--to do it so soon after the pledge was given. I was indignant. I felt we weren't as we might be, and I felt, too, that I must be atfault; but I was so proud that I didn't want to admit it, I suppose, when he did give me a grievance. It was all so mixed. I was shocked athis breaking his pledge, I was so vexed that our marriage hadn't beenthe success it might have been, and I think I was a little mad. "

"That is not the monopoly of only one of your sex, " interposed the YoungDoctor dryly. "If I were you I wouldn't apologise for it. You speak to asister in like distress. "

Kitty's eyes flamed up, but she turned her head, as though some licensedlibertine of speech had had his say, and looked with friendly eyes atMona. "Yes, yes--please go on, " she urged. 

"When I wrote that letter I had forgotten what I had done the day beforethe race. I had gone into my husband's room to find some things I neededfrom the drawer of his dressing-table; and far at the back of a drawerI found a crumpled-up roll of ten-pound notes. It was fifty poundsaltogether. I took the notes--"

She paused a moment, and the room became very still. Both her listenerswere sure that they were nearing a thing of deep importance. 

In a lower voice Mona continued: "I don't know what possessed me, butperhaps it was that the things he did of which I disapproved most hadgot a hold on me in spite of myself. I said to myself: 'I am going tothe Derby. I will take the fifty pounds, and I'll put it on a horse forShiel. ' He had talked so much to my brother about Flamingo, and I hadseen him go wrong so often, that I had a feeling if I put it on a horsethat Shiel particularly banned, it would probably win. He had been wrongnearly every time for two years. It was his money, and if it won, itwould make him happy; and if it didn't win, well, he didn't know themoney existed--I was sure of that; and, anyhow, I could replace it. Iput it on a horse he condemned utterly, but of which one or two peoplespoke well. You know what happened to Flamingo. While at Epsom I heardfrom friends that Shiel was present at the race, though he had said hewould not go. Later I learned that he had lost heavily. Then I saw himin the distance paying out money and giving bills to the bookmakers. Itmade me very angry. I don't think I was quite sane. Most women are likethat at times. "

"As I said, " remarked the Young Doctor, his face mirthfully alive. Herewas a situation indeed. 

"So I wrote him that letter, " Mona went on. "I had forgotten all aboutthe money I put on the outsider which won the race. As you know, I wascalled away to my sick sister that evening, and the money I won withShiel's fifty pounds was not paid to me till after Shiel had gone. "

"How much was it?" asked Kitty breathlessly. 

"Four thousand pounds. "

Kitty exclaimed so loudly that she smothered her mouth with a hand. "Why, he only needs for the syndicate two thousand pounds--ten thousanddollars, " she said excitedly. "But what's the good of it, if he can'tlay his hand on it by midnight to-night!"

"He can do so, " was Mona's quick reply. "I was going to tell him that, but the lawyer came, and--"

Kitty sprang up and down in excitement. "I had a plan. It might haveworked without this. It was the only way then. But this makes itsure--yes, most beautifully sure. It shows that the thing to do isto follow your convictions. You say you actually have the money, Mrs. Crozier?"

Mona took from her pocket an envelope, and out of it she drew four Bankof England notes. "Here it is--here are four one-thousand-pound notes. I had it paid to me that way five years ago, and here--here it is, " sheadded, with almost a touch of hysteria in her voice, for the excitementof it all acted on her like an electric storm. 

"Well, we'll get to work at once, " declared Kitty, looking at the notesadmiringly, then taking them from Mona and smoothing them out withtender firmness. "It's just the luck of the wide world, as my fatherused to say. It actually is. Now you see, " she continued, "it's likethis. That letter you wrote him"--she addressed herself to Mona--"ithas to be changed. You have got to rewrite it, and you must put into itthese four bank-notes. Then when you see him again you must have thatletter opened at exactly the right moment, and--oh, I wonder if you willdo it exactly right!" she added dubiously to Mona. "You don't play yourgame very well, and it's just possible that, even now, with all thecards in your hands, you will throw them away as you did in the past. Iwish that--"

Seeing Mona's agitation changing to choler, the Young Doctor intervened. He did not know Kitty was purposely stinging Crozier's unhappy littleconsort, so that she should be put upon her mettle to do the thingwithout bungling. 

"You can trust Mrs. Crozier to act carefully; but what exactly do youmean? I judge that Mrs. Crozier does not see more distinctly than Ido, " he remarked inquiringly to Kitty, and with admonishment in tone andemphasis. 

"No, I do not understand quite--will you explain?" interposed Mona withinner resentment at being managed, but feeling that she could not dowithout Kitty even if she would. 

"As I said, " continued Kitty, "I will open that letter, and you will putin another letter and these bank-notes; and when he repeats what he saidabout the way you felt and wrote when he broke his pledge, you can blazeup and tell him to open the letter. Then he will be so sorry that he'llget down on his knees, and you will be happy ever after. "

"But it will be a fraud, and dishonest and dishonourable, " protestedMona. 

Kitty almost sniffed, but she was too agitated to be scornful. "Justleave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable toopen the letter again--I've opened it once, and I don't feel any theworse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind atall. I'm a light-minded person. "

Looking closely at her, the Young Doctor got a still further insightinto the mind and soul of this prairie girl, who used a lid of irony tocover a well of deep feeling. Things did not weigh on her mind! He wassure that pain to the wife of Shiel Crozier would be mortal torture toKitty Tynan. 

"But I felt exactly what I wrote that Derby Day when he broke hispledge, and he ought to know me exactly as I was, " urged Mona. "I don'twant to deceive him, to appear a bit better than I am. "

"Oh, you'd rather lose him!" said Kitty almost savagely. "Knowing howhard it is to keep a man under the best circumstances, you'd willinglymake the circumstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides, weren't you sorry afterwards that you wrote that letter?"

"Yes, yes, desperately sorry. "

"And you wished often that your real self had written on Derby Day andnot the scratch-cat you were then?"

Mona flushed, but answered bravely, "Yes, a thousand times. "

"What business had you to show him your cat-self, your unreal, not yourreal self on Derby Day five years ago? Wasn't it your duty to show himyour real self?"

Mona nodded helplessly. "Yes, I know it was. "

"Then isn't it your duty to see that your real self speaks in thatletter now?"

"I want him to know me exactly as I am, and then--"

Kitty made a passionate gesture. Was ever such an uncomprehending womanas this diamond-button of a wife?

"And then you would be unhappy ever after instead of being happy everafter. What is the good of prejudicing your husband against you bytelling the unnecessary truth. He is desperate, and besides, he has beenaway from you for five years, and we all change somehow--particularlymen, when there are so many women in the world, and very pretty womenof all ages and kinds and colours and tastes, and dazzling, deceitfulhussies too. It isn't wise for any woman to let her husband or any oneat all see her exactly as she is; and only the silly ones do it. Theytell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and itisn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tellthe exact truth; and they can be just as unfair to themselves as theyare to others. Besides, haven't you any sense of humour, Mrs. Crozier?It's as good as a play, this. Just think: after five years ofdesertion, and trouble without end, and it all put right by a littlesleight-of-hand. Shall I open it?"

She held the letter up. Mona nodded almost eagerly now, for come of asubtle, social world far away, she still was no match for the subtletyof the wilds--or was it the cunning the wild things know?

Kitty left the room, but in a moment afterwards returned with the letteropen. "The kettle on the hob is the friend of the family, " she saidgaily. "Here it is all ready for what there is to do. You go and keepwatch for Mr. Crozier, " she added to the Young Doctor. "He won't be gonelong, I should think, and we don't want him bursting in on us beforeI've got that letter safe back into his desk. If he comes, you keep himbusy for a moment. When we're quite ready I'll come to the front door, and then you will know it is all right. "

"I'm to go while you make up your prescription--all right!" said theYoung Doctor, and with a wave of the hand he left the room. 

Instantly Kitty brought a lead pencil and paper. "Now sit down and writeto him, Mrs. Crozier, " she said briskly. "Use discretion; don't gush;slap his face a little for breaking his pledge, and afterwards tellhim that you did at the Derby what you had abused him for doing. Then explain to him about this four thousand pounds--twenty thousanddollars--my, what a lot of money, and all got in one day! Tell him thatit was all won by his own cash. It's as easy as can be, and it will be acertainty now. "

So saying, she lit a match. "You--hold this wicked old catfish letterinto the flame, please, Mrs. Crozier, and keep praying all the time, and please remember that 'our little hands were never made to tear eachother's eyes. '"

Mona's small fingers were trembling as she held the fateful letterinto the flame, and then in silence both watched it burn to a cinder. Afaint, hopeful smile was on Mona's face now. 

"What isn't never was to those that never knew, " said Kitty briskly, andpushed a chair up to the table. "Now sit down and write, please. "

Mona sat down. Taking up a sheet of notepaper she looked at itdubiously. 

"Oh, what a fool I am!" said Kitty, understanding the look. "And that'swhat every criminal does--he forgets something. I forgot the notepaper. Of course you can't use that notepaper. Of course not. He'd know it ina minute. Besides, the sheet we burned had an engraved address on it. Inever thought of that--good gracious!"

"Wait--wait, " said Mona, her face lighting. "I may have some sheets inmy writing-case. It's only a chance, but there were some loose sheets init when I left home. I'll go and see. "

While she was gone to her bedroom Kitty stood still in the middle of theroom lost in reflection, as completely absorbed as though she was seeingthings thousands of miles away. In truth, she was seeing things millionsof miles away; she was seeing a Promised Land. It was a gift of hers, ora penalty of her life, perhaps, that she could lose herself in reverieat a moment's notice--a reverie as complete as though she was subtractedfrom life's realities. Now, as she looked out of the door, far over theprairie to a tiny group of pine-trees in the vanishing distance, linesshe once read floated through her mind:

 "Away and beyond the point of pines, In a pleasant land where the glad grapes be, Purple and pendent on verdant vines, I know that my fate is awaiting me. "

What fate was to be hers? There was no joy in her eyes as she gazed. Mrs. Crozier was beside the table again before she roused herself fromher trance. 

"I've got it--just two sheets, two solitary sheets, " said Mona intriumph. "How long they have been in my case I don't know. It is almostuncanny they should be there just when they're most needed. "

"Providential, we should say out here, " was Kitty's response. "Begin, please. Be sure you have the right date. It was--"

Mona had already written the date, and she interrupted Kitty withthe words, "As though I could forget it!" All at once Kitty put arestraining hand on her arm. 

"Wait--wait, you mustn't write on that paper yet. Suppose you didn'twrite the real wise thing--and only two sheets of paper and so much tosay?"

"How right you always are!" said Mona, and took up one of the blanksheets which Kitty had just brought her. 

Then she began to write. For a minute she wrote swiftly, nervously, andhad nearly finished a page when Kitty said to her, "I think I had bettersee what you have written. I don't think you are the best judge. Yousee, I have known him better than you for the last five years, and Iam the best judge please, I mean it in the rightest, kindest way, " sheadded, as she saw Mona shrink. It was like hurting a child, and sheloved children--so much. She had always a vision of children at herknee. 

Silently Mrs. Crozier pushed the sheets towards her. Kitty read the pagewith a strange, eager look in her eyes. "Yes, that's right as far asit goes, " she said. "It doesn't gush. It's natural. It's you as you arenow, not as you were then, of course. "

Again Mona bent over the paper and wrote till she had completed a page. Then Kitty looked over her shoulder and read what had been written. "No, no, no, that won't do, " she exclaimed. "That won't do at all. It isn'tin the way that will accomplish what we want. You've gone quite, quitewrong. I'll do it. I'll dictate it to you. I know exactly what to say, and we mustn't make any mistake. Write, please--you must. "

Mona scratched out what had been written without a word. "I am waiting, "she said submissively. 

"All right. Now we go on. Write. I'll dictate. " "'And look here, dearest, '" she began, but Mona stopped her. 

"We do not say 'look here' in England. I would have said 'and see. '"

"'And see-dearest, '" corrected Kitty, with an accent on the last word, "'while I was mad at you for the moment for breaking your promise--'"

"In England we don't say 'mad' in that connection, " Mona againinterrupted. "We say 'angry' or 'annoyed' or 'vexed. '" There was realdistress in her tone. 

"Now I'll tell you what to do, " said Kitty cheerfully. "I'll speak it, and you write it my way of thinking, and then when we've finished youwill take out of the letter any words that are not pure, noble, classicEnglish. I know what you mean, and you are quite right. Mr. Croziernever says 'look here' or 'mad, ' and he speaks better than any one Iever heard. Now, we certainly must get on. "

After an instant she began again. 

"--While I was angry at you a moment for breaking your promise, I cannotreproach you for it, because I, too, bet on the Derby, but I bet on ahorse that you had said as much against as you could. I did it becauseyou had very bad luck all this year and lost, and also last year, and Ithought--"

For several minutes, with greater deliberation than was usual with her, Kitty dictated, and at the end of the letter she said, "I am, dearest, your--"

Here Mona sharply interrupted her. "If you don't mind I will say thatmyself in my own way, " she said, flushing. 

"Oh, I forgot for the moment that I was speaking for you!" respondedKitty, with a lurking, undermeaning in her voice. "I threw myself intoit so. Do you think I've done the thing right?" she added. 

With a direct, honest friendliness Mona looked into Kitty eyes. "Youhave said the exact right thing as to meaning, I am sure, and I canchange an occasional word here and there to make it all conventionalEnglish. "

Kitty nodded. "Don't lose a minute in copying it. We must get the letterback in his desk as soon as possible. "

As Mona wrote, Kitty sat with the envelope in her hand, alternatelylooking at it and into the distance beyond the point of pines. She wascertain that she had found the solution of the troubles of Shiel andMona Crozier, for Crozier would now have his fortune, and the return tohis wife was a matter of course. Was she altogether sure? But yes, shewas altogether sure. She remembered, with a sudden, swift plunge ofblood in her veins, that early dawn when she bent over him as he laybeneath the tree, and as she kissed him in his sleep he had murmured, "My darling!" That had not been for her, though it had been her kisswhich had stirred his dreaming soul to say the words. If they had onlybeen meant for her, then--oh, then life would be so much easier in thefuture! If--if she could only kiss him again and he would wake and say--

She got to her feet with an involuntary exclamation. For an instant shehad been lost in a world of her own, a world of the impossible. 

"I almost thought I heard a step in the other room, " she said inexplanation to Mona. Going to the door of Crozier's room, she appearedto listen for a moment, and then she opened it. 

"No, it is all right, " she said. 

In another few minutes Mona had finished the letter. "Do you wish toread it again?" she asked Kitty, but not handing it to her. 

"No, I leave the words to you. It was the right meaning I wanted in it, "she replied. 

Suddenly Mona came to her and laid a hand on her arm. "You arewonderful--a wonderful, wise, beloved girl, " she said, and there weretears in her eyes. 

Kitty gave the tiny fingers a spasmodic clasp, and said: "Quick, we mustget them in!" She put the banknotes inside the sheets of paper, thenhastily placed both in the envelope and sealed the envelope again. 

"It's just a tiny bit damp with the steam yet, but it will be all rightin five minutes. How soiled the envelope is!" Kitty added. "Five yearsin and out of the desk, in and out of his pocket--but all so nice andunsoiled and sweet and bonny inside, " she added. "To say nothing of thebawbees, as Mr. Crozier calls money. Well, we are ready. It all dependson you now, Mrs. Crozier. "

"No, not all. "

"He used to be afraid of you; now you are afraid of him, " said Kitty, asthough stating a commonplace. 

There was no more shrewishness left in the little woman to meet thischastisement. The forces against her were too many. Loneliness and thelong struggle to face the world without her man; the determination ofthis masterful young woman who had been so long a part of her husband'slife; and, more than all, a new feeling altogether--love, and thedependence a woman feels, the longing to find rest in strong arms, whichcomes with the first revelation of love, had conquered what Kitty hadcalled her "bossiness. " She was now tremulous before the crisis whichshe must presently face. Pride in her fortune, in her independence, haddied down in her. She no longer thought of herself as a woman especiallyendowed and privileged. She took her fortune now like a man; for she hadbeen taught that a man could set her aside just because she had money, could desert her to be independent of it. It had been a revelation toher, and she was chastened of all the termagancy visible and invisiblein her. She stood now before Kitty of "a humble and a contrite heart, "and made no reply at all to the implied challenge. Kitty, instantlysorry for what she had said, let it go at that. She was only now awareof how deeply her arrows had gone home. 

As they stood silent there was a click at the gate. Kitty ran intoCrozier's room, thrust the letter into its pigeonhole in the desk, andin a moment was back again. In the garden the Young Doctor was holdingCrozier in conversation, but watching the front door. So soon, however, as Kitty had shown herself, as she had promised, at the front door andthen vanished, he turned Crozier towards the house again by an adroitword, and left him at the door-step. 

Seeing who was inside the room Crozier hesitated, and his long face, with paleness added to its asceticism, took on a look which could havegiven no hope of happiness to Mona. It went to her heart as no look ofhis had ever gone. Suddenly she had a revelation of how little shehad known of what he was, or what any man was or could be, or of thosesprings of nature lying far below the outer lives which move in orbitsof sheltering convention. It is because some men and women are sosheltered from the storms of life by wealth and comfort that thesepiercing agonies which strike down to the uttermost depths so seldomreach them. 

Shiel half turned away, not sullen, not morose, but with a strangeapathy settled on him. He had once heard a man say, "I feel as though Iwanted to crawl into a hole and die. " That was the way he felt now, forto be beaten in the game which you have played like a man yourself andhave been fouled into an unchallenged defeat, without the voice ofthe umpire, is a fate which has smothered the soul of better men thanCrozier. 

Mona's voice stopped him. "Do not go, Shiel, " she urged gently. "No, youmust not go--I want fair-play from you, if nothing else. You must playthe game with me. I want justice. I have to say some things I had nochance to say before, and I want to hear some things I have a right tohear. Indeed, you must play the game. "

He drew himself up. Not to be a sportsman, not to play the game--toaccuse him of this would have brought him back from the edge of thegrave. 

"I'm not fit to-day. Let it be to-morrow, Mona, " was his hesitatingreply; but he did not leave the doorway. 

She shook her head and made a swift little childlike gesture towardshim. "We are sure of to-day; we are not sure of to-morrow. One or theother of us might not be here to-morrow. Let us do to-day the thing thatbelongs to to-day. "

That note struck home, for indeed the black spirit which whispers to menin their most despairing hours to end it all had whispered to him. 

"Let us do to-day the thing that belongs to to-day, " she had just said, and, strange to say, there shot into his mind words that belonged tothe days when he went to church at Castlegarry and thought of a thousandthings other than prayer or praise, but yet heard with the acute ears ofthe young, and remembered with the persistent memory of youth. "For thenight cometh when no man can work, " were the words which came to him. He shuddered slightly. Suppose that this indeed was the beginning of thenight! As she said, he must play the game--play it as Crozier of Lammiswould have played it. 

He stepped inside the room. "Let it be to-day, " he said. 

"We may be interrupted here, " she replied. Courage came to her. "Let ustalk in your own room, " she added, and going over she opened the door ofit and walked in. The matured modesty of a lost five years did not cloakher actions now. She was a woman fighting for happiness, and shehad been so beaten by the rods of scorn, so smothered by the dust ofhumiliation, that there had come to her the courage of those who wouldrather die fighting than in the lethargy of despair. 

It was like her old self to take the initiative, but she did it now inso different a way--without masterfulness or assumption. It was ratherlike saying, "I will do what I know you wish me to do; I will lay allreserve aside for your sake; I will be bold because I love you. "

He shut the door behind them and motioned her to a chair. 

"No, I will not sit, " she said. "That is too formal. You ask anystranger to sit. I am at home here, Shiel, and I will stand. "

"What was it you wanted to say, Mona?" he asked, scarcely looking ather. 

"I should like to think that there was something you wished to hear, "she replied. "Don't you want to know all that has happened since youleft us--about me, about your brother, about your friends, about Lammis?I bought Lammis at the sale you ordered; it is still ours. " She gaveemphasis to "ours. " "You may not want to hear all that has happened tome since you left, still I must tell you some things that you ought toknow, if we are going to part again. You treated me badly. There was noreason why you should have left and placed me in the position you did. "

His head came up sharply and his voice became a little hard. "I told youI was penniless, and I would not live on you, and I could do nothing inEngland; I had no trade or profession. If I had said good-bye to you, you would probably have offered me a ticket to Canada. As I was a pauperI preferred to go with what I had out of the wreck--just enough to bringme here. But I've earned my own living since. "

"Penniless--just enough to bring you out here!" Her voice had a sound ofhonest amazement. "How can you say such a thing! You had my letter--yousaid you had my letter?"

"Yes, I had your letter, " he answered. "Your thoughtful brother broughtit to me. You had told him all the dear womanly things you had said orwere going to say to your husband, and he passed them on to me with theletter. "

"Never mind what he said to you, Shiel. It was what I said thatmattered. " She was getting bolder every minute. The comedy was playinginto her hands. 

"You wrote in your letter the things he said to me, " he replied. 

Her protest sounded indignantly real. "I said nothing in the letter Iwrote you that any man would not wish to hear. Is it so unpleasant fora man who thinks he is penniless to be told that he has made the year'sincome of a cabinet minister?"

"I don't understand, " he returned helplessly. 

"You talk as though you had never read my letter. 

"I never have read your letter, " he replied in bewilderment. 

Her face had the flush of honest anger. "You do not dare to tell meyou destroyed my letter without reading it--that you destroyed allthat letter contained simply because you no longer cared for your wife;because you wanted to be rid of her, wanted to vanish and never see herany more, and so go and leave no trace of yourself! You have the couragehere to my face"--the comedy of the situation gained much from themock indignation--she no longer had any compunctions--"to say that youdestroyed my letter and what it contained--a small fortune it would beout here. "

"I did not destroy your letter, Mona, " was the embarrassed response. 

"Then what did you do with it? Gave it to some one else to read--to someother woman, perhaps. "

He was really shocked and greatly pained. "Hush! You shall not say thatkind of thing, Mona. I've never had anything to do with any woman but mywife since I married her. "

"Then what did you do with the letter?"

"It's there, " he said, pointing to the high desk with the green baizetop. 

"And you say you have never read it?"

"Never. "

She raised her head with dainty haughtiness. "Then if you have still thesame sense of honour that made you keep faith with the bookmakers--youdidn't run away from them!--read it now, here in my presence. Read it, Shiel. I demand that you read it now. It is my right. You are in honourbound--"

It was the only way. She dare not give him time to question, to suspect;she must sweep him along to conviction. She was by no means sure thatthere wasn't a flaw in the scheme somewhere, something that would betrayher; and she could hardly wait till it was over, till he had read theletter. 

In a moment he was again near her with the letter in his hand. 

"Yes, that's it--that's the letter, " she said, with wondering andreproachful eyes. "I remember the little scratchy blot from the pen onthe envelope. There it is, just as I made it five years ago. But howdisgracefully soiled the envelope is! I suppose it has been tossed aboutin your saddle-bag, or with your old clothes, and only kept to remindyou day by day that you had a wife you couldn't live with--kept as awarning never to think of her except to say, 'I hate you, Mona, becauseyou are rich and heartless, and not bigger than a pinch of snuff. 'That was the kind way you used to speak of her even when you were firstmarried to her--contemptuously always in your heart, no matter what yousaid out loud. And the end showed it--the end showed it; you desertedher. "

He was so fascinated by the picture she made of passion and incenseddeclamation that he did not attempt to open the letter, and he wonderedwhy there was such a difference between the effect of her temper onhim now and the effect of it those long years ago. He had no feeling ofuneasiness in her presence now, no sense of irritation. In spite of hertirade, he had a feeling that it didn't matter, that she must bluster inher tiny teacup if she wanted to do so. 

"Open the letter at once, " she insisted. "If you don't, I will. " Shemade as though to take the letter from him, but with a sudden twist hetore open the envelope. The bank-notes fell to the floor as he took outthe sheet inside. Wondering, he stooped to pick them up. 

"Four thousand pounds!" he exclaimed, examining them. "What does itmean?"

"Read, " she commanded. 

He devoured the letter. His eyes swam; then there rushed into them theflame which always made them illumine his mediaeval face like the lightfrom "the burning bush. " He did not question or doubt, because he sawwhat he wished to see, which is the way of man. It all looked perfectlynatural and convincing to him. 

"Mona--Mona--heaven above and all the gods of hell and Hellas, what afool, what a fool I've been!" he exclaimed. "Mona--Mona, can you forgiveyour idiot husband? I didn't read this letter because I thought it wasgoing to slash me on the raw--on the raw flesh of my own lacerating. Isimply couldn't bear to read what your brother said was in the letter. Yet I couldn't destroy it, either. It was you. I had to keep it. Mona, am I too big a fool to be your husband?"

He held out his arms with a passionate exclamation. "I asked you to kissme yesterday, and you wouldn't, " she protested. "I tried to make youlove me yesterday, and you wouldn't. When a woman gets a rebuff likethat, when--"

She could not bear it any longer. With a cry of joy she was in his arms. 

After a moment he said, "The best of all was, that you--you vixen, youbet on that Derby and won, and--"

"With your money, remember, Shiel. "

"With my money!" he cried exultingly. "Yes, that's the best of it--thenext best of it. It was your betting that was the best of all--the bestthing you ever did since we married, except your coming here. "

"It's in time to help you, too--with your own money, isn't it?"

He glanced at his watch. "Hours--I'm hours to the good. That crowd--thatgang of thieves--that bunch of highwaymen! I've got them--got them, andgot a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, too, to start again at home, at Lammis, Mona, back on the--but no, I'm not sure that I can live therenow after this big life out here. "

"I'm not so sure, either, " Mona replied, with a light of largerunderstanding in her eyes. "But we'll have to go back and stop the worldtalking, and put things in shape before we come here to stay. "

"To stay here--do you mean that?" he asked eagerly. 

"Somewhere in this big land, " she replied softly; "anyhow, to stay heretill I've grown up a little. I wasn't only small in body in the olddays, I was small in mind, Shiel. "

"Anyhow, I've done with betting and racing, Mona. I've just got timeleft--I'm only thirty-nine--to start and really do something withmyself. "

"Well, start now, dear man of Lammis. What is it you have to do beforetwelve o'clock to-night?" "What is it? Why, I have to pay over twothousand of this, "--he flourished the banknotes--"and even then I'llstill have two thousand left. But wait--wait. There was the originalfifty pounds. Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out withit. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice wasgay with raillery. 

She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame orcompunction at all. "That fifty pounds--that! Why, I used it to buy myticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him. "

He laughed greatly. All Ireland was rioting in his veins now. He hadno logic or reasoning left. "Well, that's the way to get into your oldman's heart, Mona. To think of that! I call it tact divine. Everythinghas spun my way at last. I was right about that Derby, after all. It wasin my bones that I'd make a pot out of it, but I thought I had lost itall when Flamingo went down. "

"You never know your luck--you used to say that, Shiel. "

"I say it again. Come, we must tell our friends--Kitty, her mother, andthe Young Doctor. You don't know what good friends they have been to me, mavourneen. "

"Yes, I think I do, " said Mona, opening the door to the outer room. 

Then Crozier called with a great, cheery voice--what Mona used to callhis tally-ho voice. Mrs. Tynan appeared, smiling. She knew at a glancewhat had happened. It was so interesting that she could even forgiveMona. 

"Where's Kitty?" asked Crozier, almost boisterously. 

"She has gone for a ride with John Sibley, " answered Mrs. Tynan. 

"Look, there she is!" said Mona, laying a hand on Crozier's arm, andpointing with the other out over the prairie. 

Crozier looked out towards the northwestern horizon, and in the distancewas a woman riding as hard as her horse could go, with a man gallopinghard after her. It seemed as though they were riding into the sunset. 

"She's riding the horse you won that race with years ago when you firstcame here, Mr. Crozier, " said Mrs. Tynan. "John Sibley bought it fromMr. Brennan. "

Mona did not see the look which came into Crozier's face as, with onehand shading his eyes and the other grasping the banknotes which were tostart him in life again, independent and self-respecting, he watched thegirl riding on and on, ever ahead of the man. 

It was at that moment the Young Doctor entered the room, and hedistracted Mona's attention for a moment. Going forward to him Monashook him warmly by the hand. Then she went up to Mrs. Tynan and kissedher. 

"I would like to kiss your daughter too, Mrs. Tynan, " Mona said. .. . "What are you looking at so hard, Shiel?" she presently added to herhusband. 

He did not turn to her. His eyes were still shaded by his hand. 

"That horse goes well yet, " he said in a low voice. "As good as ever--asgood as ever. "

"He loves horses so, " remarked Mona, as though she could tell Mrs. Tynanand the Young Doctor anything about Shiel Crozier which they did notknow. 

"Kitty rides well, doesn't she?" asked Mrs. Tynan of Crozier. 

"What a pair--girl and horse!" Crozier exclaimed. "Thoroughbred--absolutely thoroughbred!"

Kitty had ridden away with her heart's secret, her very own, as shethought: but Shiel Crozier knew--the man that mattered knew. 

EPILOGUE

Golden, all golden, save where there was a fringe of trees at awatercourse; save where a garden, like a spot of emerald, made a buttonon the royal garment wrapped across the breast of the prairie. Above, making for the trees of the foothills far away, a golden eagle floated, a prairie-hen sped affrighted from some invisible thing; and in the fardistance a railway train slipped down the plain like a serpent makingfor a covert in the first hills of the first world that ever was. 

At a casual glance the vast plain seemed uninhabited, yet here and therewere men and horses, tiny in the vastness, but conquering. Here andthere also--for it was July--a haymaker sharpened his scythe, and thesound came singing through the air radiant and stirring with life. 

Seated in the shade of a clump of trees a girl sat with her chin in herhands looking out over the prairie, an intense dreaming in her eyes. Herhorse was tethered near by, but it scarcely made a sound. It was a horsewhich had once won a great race, with an Irish gentleman on his back. Long time the girl sat absorbed, her golden colour, her brown-gold hairin harmony with the universal stencil of gold. With her eyes drowned inthe distance, she presently murmured something to herself, and as shedid so the eyes deepened to a nameless umber tone, deeper than gold, warmer than brown; such a colour as only can be found in a jewel or in aleaf the frost has touched. 

The frost had touched the soul which gave the colour to the eyes of thegirl. Yet she seemed all summer, all glow and youth and gladness. Hervoice was golden, too, and the words which fell from her lips were asthough tuned to the sound of falling water. The tone of the voice wouldlast when the gold of all else became faded or tarnished. It had itsorigin in the soul:

 "Whereaway goes my lad? Tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak; never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. "

The voice lingered on the words till it trailed away into nothing, likethe vanishing note of a violin which seems still to pulse faintly afterthe sound has ceased. 

"But he did not go alone, and I have not made my grave, " the girlsaid, and raised her head at the sound of footsteps. With an effort sheemerged from the half-trance in which she had been, and smiled at a manhastening towards her. 

"Dear bully, bulbous being--how that word 'bully' would have, made hercringe!" she said as the man ambled nearer. He could not go as fast ashis mind urged him. 

"I've got news--news, news!" he exclaimed, wading through his ownperspiration to where she sat. "I can guess what it is, " the girlremarked smilingly, as she reached out a hand to him, but remainedseated. "It's a real, live baby born to Lydia, wife of Methuselah, thewoman also being of goodly years. It is, isn't it. "

"The fattest, finest, most 'scrumpshus' son of all the ages that ever--"

Kitty laughed happily and very whimsically. "Like none since Moses wasfound among the bulrushes! Where was this one found, and what do youintend to call him--Jesse, after his 'pa'?"

"No--nothing so common. He's to be called Shiel--Shiel Crozier Bulrush, that's to be his name. "

The face of the girl became a shade pensive now. "Oh! And do you thinkyou can guarantee that he will be worth the name? Do you never thinkwhat his father is?"

"I'm starting him right with that name. I can do so much, anyway, "laughed the imperturbable one. "And Mrs. Bulrush, after her greateffort--how is she?

"Flying--simply flying. Earth not good enough for her. Simply flying. But here--here is more news. Guess what--it's for you. I've just comefrom the post office, and they said there was an English letter for you, so I brought it. "

He handed it over. She laid it in her lap and waited as though for himto go. 

"Can't I hear how he is? He's the best man that ever crossed my path, "he said. 

"It happens to be in his wife's, not his, handwriting--did ever such ascrap of a woman write so sprawling a hand!" she replied, holding theletter up. 

"But she'll let us know in the letter how Crozier is, won't she?"

Kitty had now recovered herself, and slowly she opened the envelope andtook out the letter. As she did so something fluttered to the ground. 

Jesse Bulrush picked it up. "That looks nice, " he said, and he whistledin surprise. "It's a money-draft on a bank. "

Kitty, whose eyes were fixed on the big, important handwriting, answeredcalmly and without apparently looking, as she took the paper from hishand: "Yes, it's a wedding present--five hundred dollars to buy what Ilike best for my home. So she says. "

"Mrs. Crozier, of course. "

"Of course. "

"Well, that's magnificent. What will you do with it?"

Kitty rose and held out her hand. "Go back to your flying partner, happyman, and ask her what she would do with five hundred dollars if she hadit. "

"She'd buy her lord and master a present with it, of course, " heanswered. 

"Good-bye, Mr. Rolypoly, " she responded, laughing. "You always couldthink of things for other people to do; and have never done anythingyourself until now. Good-bye, father. "

When he was gone and out of sight her face changed. With sudden angershe crushed and crumpled up the draft for five hundred in her hand. "'Atoken of affection from both!'" she exclaimed, quoting from the letter. "One lone leaf of Irish shamrock from him would--"

She stopped. "But he will send a message of his own, " she continued. "Hewill--he will. Even if he doesn't, I'll know that he remembers just thesame. He does--he does remember. "

She drew herself up with an effort, and, as it were, shook herself freefrom the memories which dimmed her eyes. 

Not far away a man was riding towards the clump of trees where she was. She saw, and hastened to her horse. 

"If I told John all I feel he'd understand. I believe he always hasunderstood, " she added with a far-off look. 

The draft was still crushed in her hand when she mounted the belovedhorse, whose name now was Shiel. 

Presently she smoothed out the crumpled paper. "Yes, I'll take it; I'llput it by, " she murmured. "John will keep on betting. He'll be brokesome day and he'll need it, maybe. "

A moment later she was riding hard to meet the man who, before thewheat-harvest came, would call her wife. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 And I was very lucky--worse luck! Any man as is a man has to have one vice God help the man that's afraid of his own wife! He saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man Her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios Law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed Searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other She looked too gay to be good Telling the unnecessary truth They had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler What isn't never was to those that never knew