This time Ben obeyed. He couldn't well do otherwise. He had suddenly grown weak and drowsy, and almost before Grannis was through speaking he was again asleep. The doctor was right about the time of healing. During the remainder of that month and well into the next, despite his restless protests, Ben Blair was a prisoner in that dull little room; and through it all Grannis remained with him. "You don't have to stay with me unless you like," Ben had said more than once; but each time Grannis had displayed his own wound, at first openly, at last, carefully concealed by bandages, whimsically. "Got to take good care of this arm of mine," he explained. "Blood poisoning's liable to set in at any minute, and that's something awful, they tell me." The invalid made no comment. * * * * * It was the evening following the afternoon of Blair's return to the Box R ranch. In the cosey kitchen, around the new range which Rankin had imported the previous Fall, sat three people,--Grannis, Graham, and Ma Graham. The two men were smoking steadily and silently. The woman, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes glued to the floor, was breathing loudly with the difficulty of the very corpulent. Of a sudden, interrupting, the door connecting with the room adjoining opened and Ben Blair appeared. "Grannis," he requested, "come here a moment, please." In silence Blair closed the door behind them, motioned his companion to a seat, and took another opposite him. He was very quiet, even for his taciturn self; and, glancing at a heap of papers on a nearby table, Grannis understood. For a long minute the two men eyed each other silently. Not without result had they lived the events of the last months together. It was the younger man who first spoke. "Grannis," he said impassively, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer. Whatever you may think it leads to must cut no figure. Will you give it?" Equally impassively the elder man nodded, "Yes." Blair selected a paper from the litter, and looked at it steadily. "What I want to know is this: have I, has anyone, no matter what the incentive may be, the right to make known after another's death things which during that person's life were carefully concealed?" The steady gaze shifted to his companion, held there compellingly. "In other words, is a tragedy any less a tragedy, any more public property, because the actors are dead? Answer me honest, Grannis." Impassively as before the overseer shook his head. "No, I think not," he said. "Let the dead past bury its dead." A moment longer the other remained motionless, then, before his companion realized what he was doing, Ben had opened the door of the sheet-iron heater and tossed the paper in his fingers fair among the glowing coals. "Thank you, Grannis," he said, "I agree with you." He stood a second looking into the suddenly kindled blaze. "As you say, to the living, life. Let the dead past bury its dead."