“Don’t be discouraged, dear,” she said caressingly. “You must learn to wait and be patient. I know him--better, perhaps, than you do--and I say he will come back. He will never take ‘No’ for an answer while you and he live.” Isabel got up and felt under her sister’s pillow for a handkerchief. “You are good and comforting, Dothy,” she whispered, “and I think I am happy in spite of my misery.” She bent to leave a kiss on the cheek of goodness and comfort. “I am going to bed now; good night. Why, how hot your face is!” “How cold your lips are, you mean,” said Dorothy playfully. “Go to bed, dear, and don’t worry any more. You will make yourself sick.” But when her sister was gone she lay very still, with closed eyes and trembling lips, and so fought her small battle to the bitter end, winning finally the victory called self-abnegation, together with its spoils, the mask of cheerfulness and the goodly robe of serenity. CHAPTER XIV THE ANCHOR COMES HOME BRANT awoke on the morning following his excommunication with one idea dominant, and that pointed to flight. Whatever he might be able to do with his life elsewhere, it was evident that the Denver experiment was a pitiful failure. This he said, cursing the fatuous assurance which had kept him from flying to the antipodes at the outset. The city of the plain was merely a clearing house for the mining camps, and sooner or later his story would have found him out, lacking help from Harding or any other personal enemy. “Anybody but a crazy fool would have known that without having to wait for an object lesson; but, of course, I had to have it hammered into me with blows,” was the way he put it to himself on the walk downtown. “Well, I have had the lesson, and I’ll profit by it and move on--like little Joey. If they would give me the chance I’d rather be a sheep dog than a wolf; but it seems that the world at large hasn’t much use for the wolf who turns collie--damn the world at large! If I hadn’t given my word to Hobart I’d be tempted to go back and join the fighting minority. As it is, I’ll run for it.” So he said, and so he meant to do; but a small thing prevented. Colonel Bowran was away, and he could not well desert in his chief’s absence. But this need no more than delay the flight. The chief engineer’s absences were usually short, and a day or two more or less would neither make nor mar the future.