"Then he is, at least, not doing it very successfully. The rope--I forgot how much Grant said it cost--fell into the canyon." "I am not very sure there are many men who would have attempted to put a rope across at all," said Barbara, and did not realize for a moment that she had, to some extent, betrayed herself. She might, though she did not admit it, feel displeased with the flume-builder herself, but that was no reason why she should permit another person to disparage his capabilities, all of which her sister was probably acquainted with. "Well," she said, indifferently, "we hope he will be successful. The man pleases me, but I would very much like to know what Grant thinks about him." "Then why don't you ask him?" Mrs. Devine shook her head. "Grant never tells anybody his opinions until he's tolerably sure he's right, and I fancy he is a little undecided about Mr. Brooke as yet," she said. "Still, it's getting shivery, and this silence is a trifle eerie. I'm going to bed." She lighted a lamp, but when she went out Barbara made her way to her room without one. There was nobody else beyond Wilkins' wife in the ranch, and she had retired some time ago. The rambling wooden building was not dark, but dusky, with black depths of shadow in the corners of the rooms, for the dim crepuscular light would, at that season, linger almost until the dawn. To some natures it would also have been more suggestive of hidden dangers than impenetrable obscurity, but Barbara passed up the rickety stairway and down an echoing passage fearlessly, and then sat down by the open window of her room, looking out into the night. A half-moon was now slowly lifting itself above the faintly-gleaming snow, and she could see the pines roll away in sombre battalions into the drifting mists below. Their sleep-giving fragrance reached her through the dew-cooled air, but she scarcely noticed it as she lay with her low basket-chair drawn close up to the window-sill. It was the flume-builder her thoughts hovered round, and she endeavored fruitlessly to define the attraction he had for her, or, as she preferred to consider it, the reason for the interest she felt in him. She admitted that this existed, and wondered vaguely how much of it was due to vanity resulting from a recognition of the fact that it was she who had roused him from a state of too acquiescent lethargy. What she had seen at the Quatomac ranch had had its significance for her, and she had realized the hopelessness of the life he was leading there. Even if she had not done so, he had told her, more or less plainly, that it was she who had given him new aspirations, and re-awakened his sense of responsibility. That, perhaps, accounted for a good deal, since she was endued with the compassionate maternal instinct which, when it finds no natural outlet, prompts many women to encourage, and on opportunity, shelter the beaten down and fallen.