“Thank you, general, but I must remain just where I am. In the spring I shall go further West—that is if I can stay until then.” “I understand just how you feel,” said Gibbs, with ready sympathy. “And wherever you go I want you to remember that I don't consider myself permanently located here. I wish we might get into something together again.” He tucked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. He, at least, was perennially hopeful. If there was a Gibbs of the Golden West Saloon, there was also a General Gibbs of Kansas. He might be purple-faced, and his dress might be shabby and neglected, but dissipation could never do for him all that it had done for Arling, his pride and his ideals measurably sustained him in his evil fortune. “Nothing's final, you know,” he went on. “I reckon there's still the last word to be spoken on most topics; and while I own I'm winded, it ain't going to be for long. I've had ups and downs before, and with half a chance it's in me to finish a winner. This place has got on my nerves, and it's not suiting my Julia either—it's on her nerves, too. Well, I never believe in evading the plain facts in a case, and I know I'm not just acting in a way to satisfy an ambitious woman, and my Julia's got her ambitions. You know what's wrong, I don't need to go into that; but I will say this much for myself; a dead and alive existence is mighty depressing to an active man such as I've always been, who's had his nose in large affairs. I can't stay here and go to seed; what's to hinder us from pulling out together in the spring? You can't leave before that, and it ain't long to wait.” “No, I can't go before spring,” Landray reluctantly agreed, “unless I can find some one who will pay me a lump sum down on my contracts.” Virginia had written him, begging him to return to Benson, but he was determined never to go back no matter what happened. Later, Virginia had asked him to send the child to her; but neither would he do this. His little son must remain with him wherever he went. Without the boy he felt his own life would be quite worthless; he felt, too, that Marian would have wished him to decide as he had decided. The winter was of unexpected severity, but to Stephen this was one of its lesser hardships. He travelled far in all weathers, not sparing himself. Night after night he came back cold and weary to his little son and his comfortless home. He saw the huddle of houses under a thousand different aspects—against the red of the winter sky; when the swift twilight had fallen; by the cold moon, which sent long black shadows streaming out across the white untrodden snow; and he learned to hate it all, as something animate and personal that had made a wreck of his life.