"Fine, VB, fine!" Jed muttered, rubbing one cheek. "To be sure, it ain't so much what you say as th' way you say it--makin' a party feel as though you meant it from th' bottom of your feet to th' tip of th' longest hair on your head!" "Well, Jed, I do mean it just that way. That horse out there--he--he stands for so much now. He stands for everything I haven't been, and for all that I want to be. He ran free as the birds, but it couldn't always be so. He had to succumb, had to give up that sort of liberty. "I took his power from him, made him my own, made him my servant. Yet it didn't scathe his spirit. It has changed all that bitterness into love, all that wasted energy into doing something useful. I didn't break him, Jed; I converted him. Understand?" "I do, VB; but we won't convert this here other beast. We'll bust him wide open, won't we? Break him, body an' spirit!" The boy smiled wanly. "That's what we're trying to do." He pointed to the candle in its daubed bottle. "Just to keep the light burning, Jed--just to keep its light fighting back the darkness. The little flame of that candle breaks the power of the black thing which would shut it in--like a heart being good and true in spite of the rotten body in which it beats. And when my body commences to want the old things--to want them, oh, so badly--I just think of this little candle here, calm and quiet and steady, sticking out of what was once a cesspool, a poison pot, and making a place in the night where men can see." While a hundred could have been counted slowly they remained motionless, quiet, not a sound breaking the silence. Then Jed began talking in a half-tone: "I know, Young VB; I know. You've got time now to light it and nurse th' flame up so's it won't need watchin'--an' not miss things that go by in th' dark. Some of us puts it off too long--like a man I know--now. I didn't know him then--when it happened. He was wanderin' around in a night that never turned to day, thinkin' he knowed where he was goin', but all th' time just bein' fooled by th' dark. "And there was a girl back in Kansas. He started after her, but it was so dark he couldn't find th' way, an' when he did-- "Some folks is fools enough to say women don't die of broken hearts. But--well, when a feller knows some things he wants to go tell 'em to men who don't know; to help 'em to understand, if he can; to give 'em a hand if they do see but can't find their way out--" He stopped, staring at the floor. VB had no cause to search for identities. From the corral came a shrill, prolonged neighing. VB arose and laid a hand gently on Jed's bowed shoulder. "That's the Captain," he said solemnly; "and he calls me when he's thirsty." While he was gone Jed remained as he had been left, staring at the floor. CHAPTER XII Woman Wants