"That's so, by Jove. Teevan got what was coming to him, he got his 'cone-uppance' as the boys say; but old Kitty--yes, it was rough on her. But she's always put a great face on it. No one would know if they _didn't_ know." "She's proud. Even though she's been another mother to me she rarely lets me see anything, and she's tried so hard to find comfort in Kitty's boy, in Alden. She's failed in that, though, for some reason." Her brother glanced sharply at her. "I'll tell you why she's failed, Nell. Alden Teevan wasn't designed to be a comfort to anyone, not even to himself. There was too much Teevan in him at the start, and too much Teevan went into his raising." "They're back in town, you know." "Yes; Teevan must have realized that old Kitty is getting on in years, and has a bit of money for Alden. Say, Sis, I hate to seem prying, but you don't--you're not thinking about Alden Teevan seriously, are you? Come, let's be confidential for twenty seconds." She mused a moment, then faced him frankly. "There's something I like in Alden, and something I don't. I know what I like and I don't know what I don't like--I only feel it. There!" He reached over to take one of her hands. "Well, Sis, you trust to the feeling. You couldn't be happy there. And you deserve something fine, poor child! You deserve to be happy again." His inner eye looked back six years to see the body of poor Dick Laithe carried into the Adirondack camp by two silent guides who had found him where a stray bullet left him. She turned a tired, smiling face into the light. "I _was_ happy, so happy; yet I wonder if you can understand how vague it seems now. It was so brief and ended so terribly. I think the shock of it made me another woman. Dick and I seem like a boy and girl I once knew who laughed and played childish games and never became real. I find myself sympathizing with them sometimes, as I would with two dear young things in a story that ended sadly." He awkwardly stroked and patted the hand he still held. "Come and live with me, Nell. There's only a one-room cabin at that place now, with a carpet of hay on the dirt floor. But I'll have a mansion there next summer that will put the eye out of this shack at Bar-7. I believe in getting back to Nature, but I don't want to land clear the other side of her. You'd be comfy with me. And it's a great life; not a line of dyspepsia in it. And think of _feeling_ yourself sliding off to sleep the moment you touch the pillow, as plainly as you feel yourself going down in an elevator. That reminds me, I'm going to bed down with the boys in the bunkhouse to-night. I'm afraid to trust myself in that bed upstairs again--I've lain awake there so many nights."