Lansdale's gaze is in the heart of the fire and his voice is low. "Do you know, Henry, I'm rather glad you didn't wait? Don't ask me why, because I can't tell you in terms divisible by the realities. But somehow the to-morrows don't seem to be assured." "Oh, pshaw! that's your dream--and the panbread its father. If you had talked that way a month ago, when you were really living from hand to mouth"-- Lansdale spreads his hands palms down and looks at them. "You promised me a new lease of life, Henry, and you've given it me,--or the key to it. I didn't believe it could be done, and my chief trouble in those first days was the thought that you'd have to bury me alone. And when we camped in a particularly rocky spot, I used to wonder how you would manage it." Jeffard's smile is of grimness. "If you had mentioned it, I could have helped you off with that burden. These mountains are full of graves, ready-made; prospect holes, where the better part of many a man lies buried. Do you see that heap of earth and stone over yonder?" Lansdale shades his eyes from the firelight and looks and sees. "That is one of them. Just behind that heap there is a shaft with a windlass across it, and for six weeks two men worked early and late digging a hole,--which turned out to be an excellent well when the water came in and stopped them." "And the water was bitter," says Lansdale. "Did you drink of it, Henry?" "No; but the other man did, and he went mad." Once more the stream and the sighing night wind share the silence. For many days Lansdale has been assuring himself that the golden moment for speech of the helpful sort must ultimately be made and not waited for. In the hour when he had consented to Bartrow's urgings he had been given to see his opportunity and had determined to grasp it,--had made the determination the excuse for sharing Jeffard's hospitality. He can look back upon that resolve now and see that it was perfunctory; that the prompting had been of duty and not at all of love for the man. But the weeks of close companionship have wrought more miracles than one, and not the least among them is a great amazement builded upon the daily renewal of Jeffard's loving-kindnesses. For the man with the world-quarrel has been a brother indeed; nurse, physician, kinsman, and succoring friend; with the world-quarrel put aside from the moment of outsetting, and with apparently no object in life less worthy than that of fighting a vicarious battle for a sick man. The summary of it is humanizing, and the last upholdings of the crust of reserve break down in the warmth of it. "May I speak as the spirit moves, Henry?" "If you think I deserve it. Why shouldn't you?" "It is a question of obligations rather than of deservings,--my obligations. No brother of my own blood could have done more for me than you have." "And you want to even it up?"