“Now what the divil are ye afther, Ma?” inquired McConnell, gazing open-mouthed at his spouse. When the brogue came rich to his wife’s tongue he knew that things were stirring in her heart. “Man dear, have ye no eyes at all, at all?” she asked impatiently, with a glance at her daughter, who was chaffing with Paul at the head of the team. McConnell’s eyes followed her glance. “Saints and angels! Is that it?” he said under his breath. “An’ for the luve av Hiven, Pa, remimber it’s not a foreman y’re buyin’.” “Bedad, Ma, it’s mesilf that can see through a stone wall with a hole in it,” he said with a wink. “Quiet your heart, little woman. The thing will be done.” But before the milk cans were safely delivered at the fort Tim McConnell was not at all so sure that the thing would be done. Indeed, so troubled in his mind was he and so uncertain that he took his friend the sergeant into his confidence. “I went the limit, Sergeant, so I did,” he said, “for I knowed that if I didn’t Ma would—would—Ma would be terrible disappointed. Offered him two hundred and fifty dollars a month and found, and what’s more I told him there was more than money in it.” “You did, eh?” said the sergeant. “And what did you say was in it?” “Well now, Sergeant dear,” said McConnell, dropping into his Doric, “you wouldn’t have me throwin’ things at his head. But I said to him, sez I, ‘If things goes well it’s not a foreman ye’ll be, my boy, an’ when that comes it’ll not be a question of money betune you an’ I,’ sez I, so I did.” “You did, eh?” replied the sergeant. “And what did he say then, McConnell?” “He didn’t say nawthin’. But from the look of him——” McConnell stopped abruptly. “Sergeant, he said he must talk to you. An’ if ye can do anything—man dear, I just can’t go home to the women wid the news. That little—they’d take it bad.” “I’ll do what I can, McConnell, but he’s got something on his mind, drawing him on.” The sergeant had a shrewd suspicion of what it was that made it impossible for Paul to remain at the Three-Bar-Cross Ranch. He also knew that no hint of this would he ever get from the young man himself. This, however, gave him but the slightest concern. “She’ll get over the thing,” he said to himself as he watched McConnell drive off down the trail. “They all must have a go at it, the little dears. But there is something eating into that boy’s soul. I only hope he will give me a chance to help him out.” The sergeant would get his chance that evening, for Paul was to spend the night at the sergeant’s quarters, but he knew well there were certain reserves beyond which men, some men at least, could not pass with each other. If Paul chose to confide in him, well and good, but he wasn’t a chap whose affairs you could pry into.