Those wasted "social" hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, how long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois' face twitched, as well as her fingers; she did not realize, as women often do not, that to Justin this conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at a necessary air-hole. After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He had thought, from Justin's manner to-day, that he was to know something of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him--that was all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of his business, anyway. [Illustration: "IT WAS SWEET TO BE CHAFFED, TO BE HEEDLESSLY YOUNG ONCE MORE"] Suddenly a word caught the ears of the two who were sitting in the dining-room. "That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he's dead." Lawson! Dosia's face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her. "Hadn't you heard before?" "No; what?" "He's dead." "Lawson _dead_! Not Lawson?" Her dry lips illy formed the words. "Yes, Dosia. Don't look like that--don't let them see in there, Girard is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up to-night. Lawson died a week ago." "How?" "Fell from his horse somewhere up in a canyon--he was drunk, I reckon. They found him twenty-four hours afterward. The superintendent of the mines wrote to Leverich. He'd tried to keep pretty straight out there, all but the drinking, I guess that was too much for him. It was the best thing he could do--to die--as Girard says. Girard hates the very sound of his name." "Oh," breathed Dosia painfully. "The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the superintendent's letter to say that she'd 'miss Mr. Barr dreadful,'--that he'd get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and 'the kids, they thought the world of him.' She signed herself, 'A true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.'" Lawson was dead!