Davison recalled now that it was the name, more than anything else, that had induced him to give Justin employment on the ranch. The name of Justin and the memories it evoked had touched some hidden tendril of his heart, and had made him kind to Justin at times when but for that he might have been otherwise. As often as he had felt inclined to turn upon Justin in hot anger that name had softened his wrath. He had never a thought that Justin was his son; yet the name had won for Justin a warmer place in his regard than Justin could have won by his own merits. As Davison sat thus in the shadowed memories of the past, there came to him a stirring of natural affection. But, whenever he turned to what he considered Justin’s dastardly betrayal of the ranch interests, this vanished. To combat it there was, too, a long-smoldering feeling against the woman who had deserted him, and who by so doing had revealed to the world his drunken rage and cruelty. That desertion he had never been quite able to forgive. For years he had tried not to think of her; but that night her memory rose strong and buoyant. He knew he had wronged her deeply, and had outraged her feelings cruelly. Perhaps that was at bottom why this long-smoldering recollection of her aroused his smothered anger. By degrees, as he thought over the past, Davison began to resent what seemed an injury done him. It was as if fate had preserved this boy through all the years to avenge the wrongs of the mother. His own son had risen to oppose him, to thwart his desires, to smite him with mailed fist. And he had helped unwittingly to fit fighting armor to the stalwart shoulders of this son; for it was through his position on the ranch, as the companion and friend of the cowboys, that Justin had arrived at that condition of comradeship with them which had really given him his present place. Davison felt that Ben should have held that position—Ben, who had the ranch interests at heart, and would have voted right. Ben was disobedient, wild, intractable, but Ben would have voted right! Davison loved Ben. Justin seemed still an outsider, an intruder. And the feeble stir of natural affection passed away. Justin remained in Denver through the remainder of the legislative session and cast his vote with the agriculturists on a number of questions. He wrote to Lucy frequently, but she did not re-visit Denver, so he did not see her again until his return to Paradise Valley. In her letters she acquainted him fully with the fact that Philip Davison did not feel kindly toward him. Justin wrote a letter also to Davison, but it was not answered. He did not again see Sibyl Dudley, nor Mary Jasper. And Fogg apparently had been permanently alienated.