haggard face from the bed.

"Oh, daddy, daddy, you know it's true. Never walk again!"

She turned with a pitiful cry to The Duke, who stood white and stiff
with arms drawn tight across his breast on the other side of the bed.

"Oh, Duke, did you hear them? You told me to be brave, and I tried not
to cry when they hurt me. But I can't be brave! Can I, Duke? Oh, Duke!
Never to ride again!"

She stretched out her hands to him. But The Duke, leaning over her and
holding her hands fast in his, could only say brokenly over and over:
"Don't, Gwen! Don't, Gwen dear!"

But the pitiful, pleading voice went on.

"Oh, Duke! Must I always lie here? Must, I? Why must I?"

"God knows," answered The Duke bitterly, under his breath, "I don't!"

She caught at the word.

"Does He?" she cried, eagerly. Then she paused suddenly, turned to me
and said: "Do you remember he said some day I could not do as I liked?"

I was puzzled.

"The Pilot," she cried, impatiently, "don't you remember? And I said I
should do as I liked till I died."

I nodded my head and said: "But you know you didn't mean it."

"But I did, and I do," she cried, with passionate vehemence, "and I will
do as I like! I will not lie here! I will ride! I will! I will! I will!"
and she struggled up, clenched her fists, and sank back faint and weak.
It was not a pleasant sight, but gruesome. Her rage against that Unseen
Omnipotence was so defiant and so helpless.

Those were dreadful weeks to Gwen and to all about her. The constant
pain could not break her proud spirit; she shed no tears; but she
fretted and chafed and grew more imperiously exacting every day. Ponka
and Joe she drove like a slave master, and even her father, when he
could not understand her wishes, she impatiently banished from her room.
Only The Duke could please or bring her any cheer, and even The Duke
began to feel that the day was not far off when he, too, would fail, and
the thought made him despair. Her pain was hard to bear, but harder than
the pain was her longing for the open air and the free, flower-strewn,
breeze-swept prairie. But most pitiful of all were the days when, in her
utter weariness and uncontrollable unrest, she would pray to be taken
down into the canyon.

"Oh, it is so cool and shady," she would plead, "and the flowers up in
the rocks and the vines and things are all so lovely. I am always better
there. I know I should be better," till The Duke would be distracted and
w