The simulation of despair in his beautiful eyes spoke more impressively than his self-scorning words. She was touched in spite of herself, despite, too, his colossal egotism. For there is an appeal about the engaging sinner that drums in a woman’s head and calls to her heart. All good women are missionaries in the last analysis, and Miss Messiter was not an exception to her sex. Even though she knew he was half a fraud and that his emotion was theatric, she could not let the moment pass. She leaned forward, a sweet, shy dignity in her manner. “Is it too late to change? Why not begin now? There is still a to-morrcw, and it need not be the slave of yesterday. Life for all of us is full of milestones.” “And how shall I begin my new career of saintliness?” he asked, with a swift return to blithe irony. “The nearest duty. Take me back to my ranch. Begin a life of rigid honesty.” “Give you up now that I have found you? That is just the last thing I would do,” he cried, with glancing eyes. “No—no. The clock can’t be turned back. I have sowed and I must reap.” He leaped to his feet. “Come! We must be going.” She rose sadly, for she knew the mood of sentimental regret for his wasted life had passed, and she had failed. They descended the trough and reached the boulder field that had marked the terminal of the glacier. At the farther edge of it the outlaw turned to point out to the girl a great bank of snow on a mountainside fifteen miles away. He changed his weight as he turned, when a rock slipped under his foot and he came down hard. He was up again in an instant, but Helen Messiter caught the sharp intake of his breath when he set foot to the ground. “You’ve sprained your ankle!” she cried. “Afraid so. It’s my own rotten carelessness.” He broke into a storm of curses and limped forward a dozen steps, but he had to set his teeth to stand the pain. “Lean on me,” she said, gently. “I reckon I’ll have to,” he grimly answered. They covered a quarter of a mile, with many stops to rest the swollen ankle. Only by the irregularity of his breathing and the damp moisture on his forehead could she tell the agony he was enduring. “It must be dreadful,” she told him once. “I’ve got to stand for it, I reckon.” Again she said, when they had reached a wooded grove where pines grew splendid on a carpet of grass: “Only two hundred yards more. I think I can bring your pony as far as the big cottonwood.” She noticed that he leaned heavier and heavier on her. However, when they reached the cottonwood he leaned no more, but pitched forward in a faint. The water bottle was empty, but she ran down to where the ponies had been left, and presently came back with his canteen. She had been away perhaps twenty minutes, and when she came back he waved a hand airily at her. “First time in my life that ever happened,” he apologized, gayly. “But why didn’t y’u get on Jim and cut loose for the Lazy D while you had the chance?”