She shook her head. "This denim is all I've got," she said, with a touch of defiance. "I wore out all I had; goats are hard on clothes." "I thought likely." His bleak face began to glow. "And I knew you was out of town away from the stores, so's I brought along a little outfit. You wait a minute, and I'll fetch it right in." He was gone before he finished speaking and returned in an incredibly short time with the trunk, which he deposited on the floor before her. Then he felt in his pocket and, finding the key, fitted it and lifted the lid. It was then, for the first time, she noticed the maimed hand. "Johnny!" she cried, and the pent emotion surged in her voice. "Johnny, you've been--hurt." "Oh, that don't amount to anything now, only the looks. I can turn out just as much work." He hurried to open the tray, but before he could remove the packing of tissue paper that enveloped the hat, she reached and took the crippled hand between her own. Her fingers fluttered, caressing, while with maternal protectiveness they covered it, and she drew him back to the broad arm of her chair. The defiance had gone out of her face; her eyes were misty and tender. "You tell me what happened," she said. So came Lucky Banks' hour. He saw this woman who had been fond of pretty clothes, who had once worn them but was now reduced to a single frock of coarse denim, turn from the fine outfit before it was even displayed; waiting, with a wondrously comforting solicitude he never had suspected in the girl whom he had left in Oregon, to hear first that miserable story of the trail. He told it briefly, but with the vividness of one whose words are coined straight from the crucible of bitter experience, and while she listened, her heart shone in her passionate eyes. "What if it had happened," she broke out at last. "If it had, Johnny, it would have been my fault. I drove you into going up there. I'm responsible for this hand. I--I couldn't have stood worse than that." The little man beamed. "Is that so, Annabel? Then I'm mighty glad Weatherbee followed that stampede. Nobody else would have seen my hand sticking up through the snow and stopped to dig me out. Unless--" he added thoughtfully, "it was Hollis Tisdale. Yes, likely Hollis would. He was the only man in Alaska fit to be Dave's running mate." "Do you mean that surveyor?" she asked. Banks nodded. "I thought so," she said with satisfaction. "Dad taught me to size people up on sight. He could tell the first minute he saw a man's face whether he was good for a bill of groceries or not; and I knew that surveyor was straight. I bet he knew you was in Seattle when he got me to write. But I wish I could have a look at the other one. He must be--great."