a smile. "I
don't reckon the North Pacific in winter comes under that heading
either. Say, there's a boy stopping around here. Alexander Mowbray.
Is he in the hotel?"

Dan cocked a sharp eye.

"I'll send a boy along," he said, pressing a bell. A sharp word to the
youth who answered it and he turned again to the visitor.

"Guess you know most of these up-country folk," he said. "There's
things moving inside. We're getting spenders in, quite a little. The
city's asking questions. Mr. Mowbray's been here all winter, and he
seems to think dollars don't cut ice beside a good time. I figger
there's going to be a fifty per cent raise in the number of outfits
making inside this season. There's a big talk of things. Well, it
mostly finds its way into this city, so we can't kick any."

"No, you folks haven't any kick coming," Kars said amiably. This man's
inquiries made no impression on him. It was the sort of thing he was
accustomed to wherever he went in Leaping Horse.

At that moment a bell rang in the office, and Kars heard his name
repeated by the 'phone operator.

"Ah, Mr. Mowbray's in," observed Dan, turning back to the office.

"Mr. Mowbray will be glad if you'll step right up, Mr. Kars." The
'phone clerk had emerged from his retreat.

"Thanks. What number?"

"Three hundred and one. Third floor, Mr. Kars," replied the clerk,
with that love of the personal peculiar to his class. Then followed a
hectoring command, "Elevator! Lively!"

Kars stepped into the elevator and was "expressed" to the third floor.

A few moments later he was looking into the depressed eyes of a youth
he had only known as the buoyant, headstrong, north-bred son of Allan
Mowbray.

The change wrought in one brief winter was greater than Kars had
feared. Dissipation was in every line of the half-dressed youth's
handsome face, and, as Kars looked into it, a great indignation mingled
with his pity. But his indignation was against the trader who had left
the youth to his own foolish devices in a city whose morals might well
have shamed an aboriginal. Nor was his pity alone for the boy. His
memory had gone back to the splendid dead. It had also flown to the
two loving women whose eyes must have rained heart-breaking tears at
the picture he was gazing upon.

The boy thing out a hand, and a smile lit his tired features for a
moment as he welcomed the man who had always been something of a hero
to him. He had hastily sli