t
to hear again--that awful word '_blowout_.'"

Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which
troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was
so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper
understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of
geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of
scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion
for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That
mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed
familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was
puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was
throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of
all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.

"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and
strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate
that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid
a preachment.

"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.

"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn
automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of
Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul.
If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness
in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have
been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and
they have lifted them in the same way."

Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because
she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a
sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made
her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was
the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in
once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue,
because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last
night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized
plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.

"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story.
It is a story--a real-life drama--and his."

York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.

"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! F