Nearly three weeks had slipped by since Leland met the outlaws, and his horses were missing still, when he sat in council at Prospect with a few of his scattered neighbours one bitter night. The big room was as bare and comfortless as it had been in his bachelor days, though there were cases at the railroad station whose contents would have transformed it, had he troubled to haul them in. Leland was somewhat grim of face, for the past few weeks had not been pleasant ones to him. The breach between him and his wife was still as wide as ever, and he felt it the more keenly because, since the night of their frankness, she had shown no sign of anger. Instead, she had treated him with a civility that was hard to bear, and had professed herself content with all the arrangements at Prospect as they were. Leland was too proud a man to make advances which he felt would be repelled, and decided bitterly that, since nothing he could do would please her, the comforts she did not seem to care about might stay where they were until they rotted. Her own rooms, at least, were furnished and fitted luxuriously, in so far as he had been able to contrive it, and, since she spent most of her time in them, the one in which his mother had lived was good enough for him. Still, all this reacted upon his temper, and, on the night when he had his neighbours there, he was feeling the strain. There were four of them, men who toiled early and late, and had a stake in the country, and they were all aware that others would probably be influenced by what they did. They listened to him gravely, sitting about the crackling stove with a box of cigars on the little table in front of them. There was nothing to drink, however, since, for several reasons, including the enactments of the legislature, strong green tea is the beverage most usually to be met with on the prairies, and of that they had just had their fill at supper. There was silence until one of them turned to the rest with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'm with Charley Leland in most of what he says," he said. "The law's necessary, as you find out when you have lived, as I have, in a country where there isn't any. Still, after all, the enforcing of it is the business of the legislature, and the most they do for us is to worry us for statistics and fine us for not ploughing unnecessary fire-guards. Then there are two or three of us on this prairie who aren't fond of tea, and, as things are, we generally know where to get a little Monongahela or Bourbon when we want it. I guess it would give a kind of tone to this _soiree_ if we had some of it now." There was approving laughter until another man spoke.