He seemed another man, for some reason, she could not tell what. The same imperturbable calm, the same level gaze of the eye, the same inscrutable mask of countenance were his, and still he seemed to retain his habit of casting the burden of speech upon others than himself; but there was about him something different. Sometimes we feel some such indefinable change in a man who has suffered a great sickness or met with some great reverse. “I wish you good morning, Mr. McMasters,” said Anastasie, half irritated at the length of his silence, though never had his eyes wavered from her face. He had wanted to speak, but his lifelong reticence glued his lips. He made no immediate reply, disdainful as usual of the irrelevant, the inconsequent. At length he drew from his inner pocket a folded bit of paper. “I have come to bring you this, Miss Lockhart,” said he, and gave it her. She looked at it, recognized it, and colored deeply. “It was my wish that you should have it,” said she. “No, I cannot.” “And why not? It is only right and fair that I should pay my debts, the same as any other person. My father paid his. I sent you the draft as I was bound to do. I wanted to pay you—especially wanted to pay you.” Her color heightened. “Why?” “Why? To square my obligations to you. They were enough. If I had known before I started what a load of debt you had put on me, there would never have been a Del Sol cow driven north. I’d have died, starved, rather than have been under any such obligation to you! I’d have choked if I’d known I was eating your bread!” “And you think you have paid all your debt now with this?” She twisted the paper of the bank draft in her fingers, unconsciously dropped it on the ground. “No,” said she, honest always; “there are some things that one can’t pay. There are some things that can’t be paid. But I sent you the draft, guessing at the total because I could never get a statement from the men fairly covering the advances you made us without my knowledge. We did eat your bread. Without you and your supplies—your horses, your everything—without your care and help all the way over the trail, we couldn’t have started and couldn’t have got through. Ah”—bitterly—“we couldn’t even have sold so well at the end of the trail. That’s all true. It’s the cruelest truth that ever was offered me.” “You didn’t want to be helped, not even by your neighbor?” “Not in that way; not after all—after everything—after some things had come out as they did.” “You mean, after your own fault had found you out, don’t you? Isn’t that the cruelest part of it?” His words were merciless, yet his voice was kind, gentle, beyond compare with any voice she had heard in all her life. “Yes!” she broke out. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. But you have had no mercy; you show none now. Did you come here this morning to make me say that?”