O'Dwyer slept peacefully in the late afternoon, and Danvers envied him the contentment of his simple nature. He drew a package of letters from his red tunic and fingered them idly as he read the addresses. He selected the last from Arthur Latimer and read again the already familiar lines: _I am coming to the Whoop Up Country with Scar Faced Charlie. He leaves again for Fort Macleod in about a week. The doctor says that office work is bad for me and that I ought to get out in the open for a year or two. Really I am curious to see you in your giddy uniform, and shall enjoy a visit, though if I could get work I might stay permanently._ _How is Burroughs progressing? Is he selling beads and tea to the Indians at a thousand per cent. profit, or selling them whisky on the Q. T. at fifty thousand per cent. profit? How are you and he hitting it off?_ _I saw Miss Thornhill last week, but, between you and me, poor devils of lawyers are not what my lady wants._ As Danvers folded the letter and replaced it, he felt a thrill of gladness at the thought of the meeting. There would be some one to share his joy in the sunsets and the prairie distances. Then the future swept toward him; he wondered if this companionship with his friend would be all that he should ever know. The intangible, divine understanding that others knew--the possibility of an appreciation that would be sweet, came vaguely into his awakening heart. He took a newspaper clipping from his notebook and read: _There is an interesting old Chinese legend which relates how an angel sits with a long pole which he dips into the Sea of Love and lifts a drop of shining water. With an expert motion he turns one-half of this drop to the right, the other half to the left, where each is immediately transformed into a soul, a male and a female; and these souls go seeking each other forever._ _The angel is so constantly occupied that he keeps no track of the souls that he separates, and they must depend on their own intuition to recognize each other._ The golden haze of the setting sun was not more glorious than the dreams that came of a loved one ever near, of a son to perpetuate his name; but the trumpet's brazen call sounding retreat, and its echoing reverberations, made Danvers spring to his feet, romance and sentiment laid aside. The present satisfied. Soldiering was good. O'Dwyer sat up rubbing his eyes, with an exclamation of surprise at the late hour. As they ran through the big, open gate with its guard-room and sentry, they saw Burroughs moving toward the lodges near the timber on the eastern side of the island, while Toe String Joe, leaving his crony, came to the fort. "Sweet Oil Bob's a favorite in the lodges all roight," remarked O'Dwyer. "There'll be trouble if he don't let Scar Faced Charlie's squaw alone." "Pine Coulee?" questioned Danvers.