don't quit before its jaws close on our heels. He was a big man.
He was a strong man. I mean big and strong in spirit. You've lost a
great father, and I a--partner. It's seven months and more
since--since that time." His voice had dropped to a gentle, persuasive
note, his dark eyes gazing urgently at the girl's averted face. "Is it
good to sit around here in the chill evening dreaming, and thinking,
and tearing open afresh a wound time and youths ready to heal up good?
Say, I don't just know how to hand these things right. I don't even
know if they are right. But it kind of seems to me we folk have all
got our work to do in a country that don't stand for even natural
regrets. It seems to me we all got to shut our teeth and get right on,
or we'll pay the penalty this country is only too ready to claim.
Guess we need all the force in us to make good the life north of
'sixty.' Sitting around thinking back's just going to weaken us so
we'll need to hand over the first time our bluff is called."

Jessie's sad eyes came back to his as he finished speaking. She nodded.

"Yes. You're surely right. It's no use. It's worse. It's playing
the enemy's game. Mother needs my help. Alec. The little kiddies at
the Mission. You're right, Murray." Then, in a moment of passion her
eyes lit and all that was primitive in her flamed up. "Oh, I could
curse them, I could crush them in these two hands," she cried, suddenly
thrusting out two clenched small fists in impotent threat,
"these--these devils who have killed my daddy!"

The man's regard never wavered. The girl's beauty in the passion of
the moment held him. Never had her desirability appeared greater to
him. It was on the tip of his tongue to pour out hot words of love.
To force her, by the very strength of his passionate determination, to
yield him the place in her heart he most desired. But he refrained.
He remembered in time that such a course must be backed by a physical
attraction which he knew he entirely lacked. That lack must be
compensated for by an added caution.

He shook his head.

"Don't talk that way," he said gently. "It's all been awful. But it
can't be undone now, and---- Say, Jessie, you got your mother, and a
brother who needs you. Guess you're more blessed than I am. I haven't
a soul in the world. I'm just a bit of flotsam drifting through life,
looking for an anchorage, and never finding one. That's how it is I'm
right here now.