Etienne smiled back in perfect good nature, “Never, I think, my friend, though some day duty may recall me. I think your mountains have got hold of me. Their clutch is stronger than that of the vigilants of the French Republic.” Steven looked sharply at him. The man had indeed the look of the French noble house of Napoleonic sympathies. “Etienne was a French colonel of the Guards,” explained St. Vrain. “Something happened in his life. He came to this country, as you see, down the Mississippi, over the plains, and he cannot break himself away.” A great weight was on Steven’s chest. He thought perhaps he was going to be ill. Never did he remember having had such a feeling of depression. This was the last night he should spend with this company. These daring, free, wild, fearless men, rich and uncouth, sharing a common love for the grandeur of the mountains, speaking the same tongue, understanding the silence of the timber-line heights--was he never to mingle with them again? Had he lived and dared throughout the past twelvemonth just to go away, now that he had become one with the life? St. Vrain broke in on his thoughts. “This Steven has grown two inches this year, I swear,” said he, “and see how thick through the chest the man is.” He no longer called him lad, thought Steven, “This life has made a man of him. Here’s where he belongs.” Unable to bear his heavy chest in company any more, Steven got up and went out. He paced up and down in the moonlight, and his thoughts were of the girl he had left standing before her hearth but a few nights before. Why had she ever warned him, in the first place? Why had she come to let him out the _carcel_? That debt angered him. And why had she sent him away on an errand of life and death only to treat him like a felon while he was gone? The more he thought of it the heavier became his chest and the tightness about his heart caused an acute pain. The chill indifference that had brought him north had melted away. But this hurt that followed his indifference was worse than anything else could have been. He strode back and forth in the road in an unconscious effort to work off the pain that had accumulated and become dammed up during the past few days, the burning sense of injustice. No, he could not stay in this country, much as he loved it. The very name of Santa Fe would always be connected with Consuelo. Her lovely face was the first he had seen as he entered the Villa, and the last. If he did not put her sharply out of his mind now it would be the last that he carried out of the West.