“Anything,” she answered, her proud reticence giving way before her need, “that will keep me from the charity of my friends. The frock I have on, plain as it is, is mine through the generosity of Paul Langford. The bread I eat he pays for. He—he lied to me, Louise. He told me the cowmen had made a purse for my present needs. They hadn’t. It was all from him. I found out. Mrs. White is poor. She can’t keep a great, strapping girl like me for nothing. I am such a hearty eater, and he has been paying her, Louise, for what I ate. Think of it! I thought I should die when I found it out. I made her promise not to take another cent from him—for me. So I have been working to make it up. I have washed and ironed and scrubbed and baked. I was man of affairs at the ranch while Mr. White went out with the gang for the Fall round-up. I have herded. But one has to have things besides one’s bread. The doctor was paid out of that make-believe purse, but it must all be made up to Paul Langford—every cent of it.” “Mr. Langford would be very much hurt if you should do that,” began Louise, slowly. “It was because of him, you know, primarily, that—” “He owes me nothing,” interrupted Mary, sharply. “Oh,” said Louise, smiling in the dark. “I believe I could teach school,” went on Mary, with feverish haste, “if I could get a school to teach.” “I should think Mr. Gordon could help you to secure a place here,” said Louise. “I have not told Mr. Gordon my troubles,” said Mary, gravely. “I should not dream of intruding with such petty affairs while his big fight is on—his glorious fight. He will avenge my father. Nothing matters but that. He has enough to bear—without a woman’s trivial grievances.” “But he would be glad to take that little trouble for you if he knew,” persisted Louise. She was feeling small and of little worth in the strength of Mary’s sweeping independence. She was hauntingly sure that in like circumstances she would be weak enough to take her trouble to—a man like Gordon, for instance. It came to her, there in the dark, that maybe he loved Mary. She had no cause to wonder, if this were true. Mary was fine—beautiful, lovable, stanch and true and capable, and he had known her long before he knew there was such a creature in existence as the insignificant, old-maidenish, mouse-haired reporter from the East. The air of the room suddenly became stifling. She threw open a window. The soft, damp air of the cloudy, warm darkness floated in and caressed her hot cheeks. Away, away over yonder, beyond the twinkling camp-fires on the flat, across the river, away to the east, were her childhood’s home and her kin. Here were the big, unthinking, overbearing cow country and—the man who loved Mary Williston, maybe. It was getting late bedtime. Men were shuffling noisily through the hall on their way to their rooms. Scraps of conversation drifted in to the two girls. “He’s a fool to make the try without Williston.”