At last, half desperate as they were, they kicked him savagely and flung him off. With a look in his eyes that haunted them as long as they lived, he retreated then to his master’s side, and lay down in a heavy huddle of despair, still watching them. As they disappeared, he lifted his head, and for the last time they heard that long, heart-breaking howl. It was answered by a coyote in the canyon above. * * * * * A week later the Associated Press sent out the following dispatch: “The Darnell party, who were supposed to have perished in the Bitter Root Mountains, returned last night. Their hardships and sufferings were terrible. There is great rejoicing over their safe return. They were compelled to leave the cook, who had been sick the entire time, to die in the mountains. But for their determined efforts to bring him out alive, they would certainly have returned a month earlier.” The world read the dispatch and rejoiced with those rejoicing. But one woman, reading it, fell, as one dead, beside her laughing boy. PATIENCE APPLEBY’S CONFESSING-UP PATIENCE APPLEBY’S CONFESSING-UP “It must be goin’ to rain! My arm aches me so I can hardly hold my knitting needles.” “Hunh!” said Mrs. Wincoop. She twisted her thread around her fingers two or three times to make a knot; then she held her needle up to the light and threaded it, closing one eye entirely and the other partially, and pursing her mouth until her chin was flattened and full of tiny wrinkles. She lowered her head and looking at Mrs. Willis over her spectacles with a kind of good-natured scorn, said—“Is that a sign o’ rain?” “It never fails.” Mrs. Willis rocked back and forth comfortably. “Like as not it begins to ache me a whole week before it rains.” “I never hear tell o’ such a thing in all my days,” said Mrs. Wincoop, with unmistakable signs of firmness, as she bent over the canton flannel night-shirt she was making for Mr. Wincoop. “Well, mebbe you never. Mebbe you never had the rheumatiz. I’ve had it twenty year. I can’t get red of it, anyways. I’ve tried the Century liniment—the one that has the man riding over snakes an’ things—and the arnicky, and ev’ry kind the drug-store keeps. I’ve wore salt in my shoes tell they turned white all over; and I kep’ a buckeye in my pocket tell it wore a hole and fell out. But I never get red o’ the rheumatiz.” Mrs. Wincoop took two or three stitches in silence; then she said—“Patience, now, she _can_ talk o’ having rheumatiz. She’s most bent in two with it when she has it—and that’s near all the time.” The rocking ceased abruptly. Mrs. Willis’s brows met, giving a look of sternness to her face. “That’s a good piece o’ cotton flannel,” she said. “Hefty! Fer pity’s sake! D’ you put ruffles on the bottom o’ Mr. Wincoop’s night-shirt? Whatever d’you do that fer?”