s back here, he must be kept away from me. The man is
utterly devoid of refinement or consideration."

In the meanwhile Gordon was riding, circumspectly, down the rutted
trail, and it was an hour later when he dismounted at the shanty of
Nasmyth's workmen, and shared a meal with the gang employed on the
dam. After that he sat with Nasmyth, who still limped a little, in the
hut, from which, as the door stood open, they could see the men stream
up into the Bush and out along the dam. The dam now stood high above
the water-level, for the frost had bound fast the feeding snow upon
the peaks above, though the stream roared and frothed through the two
big sluice-gates. By-and-by, the ringing of axes and the clink of
drills broke through the sound of the rushing waters. Gordon, who
stretched himself out on a deer-hide lounge, smiled at Nasmyth as he
lighted his pipe.

"I've been talking a little sense to Waynefleet this morning. I felt I
had to, though I'm afraid it's not going to be any use," he
announced.

"Whether you were warranted or not is, of course, another matter,"
said Nasmyth. "Perhaps you were, if you did it on Miss Waynefleet's
account. Anyway, I don't altogether understand why you should be sure
it will have no effect."

Gordon looked at him with a grin. "Well," he remarked oracularly,
"it's easy to acquire an inflated notion of one's own importance,
though it's quite often a little difficult to keep it. Something's
very apt to come along and prick you, and you collapse flat when it
lets the inflation out. In some cases one never quite gets one's
self-sufficiency back. The scar the prick made is always there, but
it's different with Waynefleet. He is made of self-closing jelly, and
when you take the knife out the gap shuts up again. It's quite hard to
fancy it was ever there."

Nasmyth nodded gravely, for there was an elusive something in his
comrade's tone that roused his sympathy.

"Gordon," he said, "is it quite impossible for you to go back East
again?"

Gordon leaned back in his chair, and glanced out across the toiling
men upon the dam, at the frothing river and rugged hillside, with a
look of longing in his eyes.

"In one way it is, but I want you to understand," he replied. "I might
begin again in some desolate little town--but I aimed higher--and was
once very nearly getting there. As it is, if I made my mark, the thing
I did would be remembered against me. We'll let it go. As a surgeon of
an