"Is there any mail for me?" He tried to speak casually but, to himself the eager note in his voice seemed to shriek and vibrate. Making every allowance for delays and changed addresses he had calculated that by now he should have an answer from Slim's mother or sister. He did not realize how positively he had counted on a letter until the clerk shook his head. "Nothing?" Bruce looked at him blankly. "Nothing." The answer seemed to take the last scrap of his vitality. He moved to the nearest chair and sat down heavily. The thought of assuming Slim's responsibilities, of making up for his own futile years, and bringing to pass at least a few of his mother's dreams for him, had become a kind of obsession since that first night of horror after his quarrel with Slim. It had kept him going, hanging on doggedly, when, as he since believed, he might have given up. It seemed to have needed the ghastly, unexpected happening in the lonely cabin to have aroused in him the ambition which was his inheritance from his mother. But it was awake at last, the stronger perhaps for having lain so long dormant. Failures, humiliating moments, hasty, ungenerous words, heartless deeds, have a way of coming back with startling vividness in the still solitude of mountains, and out of the passing of painful panoramas had grown Bruce's desire to "make good." Now, in the first shock of his intense disappointment he felt that without a tangible incentive he was done before he had started. "Mistah Bruce, if you'll jest step out and take what they is," announced Ma Snow from the doorway. "And watch out foah yoah laig in this hole heah." She called over her shoulder: "Mistah Hinds, I want you should get to work and fix that place to-morrow or I'll turn yoah ol' hotel back on yoah hands. You heah me?" The threat always made Old Man Hinds jump like the close explosion of a stick of giant powder. Bruce looked at the "light" bread and the Oregon-grape "jell," the steaming coffee and the first butter he had seen in months, while before his plate on the white tablecloth at the "transient" end of the table, sat a slice of ham with an egg! like a jewel--its crowning glory. Ma Snow whispered confidentially: "One of the hins laid day 'fore yistiddy." The prize had been filched from Mr. Snow, one of whose diversions was listening for a hen to cackle. From his height Bruce looked down upon the work-stooped little woman and he saw, not her churn-like contour nor her wrinkled face, but the light of a kind heart shining in her pale eyes. He wanted to cry--he--Bruce Burt! He fought the inclination furiously. It was too ridiculous--weak, sentimental, to be so sensitive to kindness. But he was so tired, so lonely, so disappointed. He touched Ma Snow's ginger-colored hair caressingly with his finger tips and the impulsive, boyish action made for Bruce a loyal friend.