Wilmot Allen was surprised and annoyed at being called back to New York by his employer. He had not "gotten over" Barbara in the least, but the great West had entered his blood. Thanks to financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in the forest soil, He had grown in body and mind. Wall Street, that had seemed so broad and important to him, now seemed narrow and insignificant. It was better for a man, a good horse between his knees, to find out what lay beyond the Ridges than whether steel was going up or down. He looked back upon his past life, not, it is true, with contempt and loathing, but with amused tolerance, as a man wise and reliable looks back upon the pranks of his boyhood. He loved Barbara with all his heart, but no longer with the feeling that the loss of her would put an end to all the possibilities of life. Indeed he was coolly resolved in the event of her marrying somebody else to marry somebody else himself. The thought of children and a home had grown very dear to him. In short, he had assimilated a characteristic of the great unsettled West, where the ratio of the male of the species to the female is often as great as ten to one. But if the year did not cure him of Barbara he would get her if he could. To the main line was a day's journey over a single-track road abounding in undeveloped way stations, at which an insatiable locomotive was forever stopping to drink. At one of these stations a young man taller and broader even than Wilmot himself, and like him bearded and brown as autumn leaves, boarded the train laboriously and came down the aisle occasionally catching at the backs of seats for support. A second look assured Wilmot that the stranger was not drunk, but sick or hurt, and he was wondering whether or not to offer him assistance, when the stranger suddenly stopped and smiled, steadied himself with one hand, and held out the other. "I heard that you would be on this train," he said simply, "so I managed to catch it, too. May I sit with you?" Wondering, Wilmot made room for the stranger and waited developments. But as these were not at once forthcoming he felt that he must break a silence which seemed awkward to him. And he turned his head and saw that the man had fainted. A request for whiskey addressed to a car containing a dozen men accustomed to wrest metals from the earth was not in vain. Wilmot chose the nearest of twelve outstretched flasks, and was obliged to refuse a thirteenth in the kindly hand of the conductor. "Fed better?" "Thanks, I'm all right." The twelve miners withdrew tactfully to their seats. "Sure?" "Sure. Just let me sample that brand again. Good. Now if you don't mind I'll say what I came to say."