o hold a man accountable for everything he may
chance to say. Anyway, I think I meant it."

Something in his voice suggested that he was of the same mind still,
but Laura glanced at him again.

"Aren't we getting away from the subject?" she queried. "The land you
made over to my father must have cost you something. It is a thing I
rather shrink from mentioning, but have you any expectation of ever
getting the money back?"

Nasmyth did not exactly understand, until a considerable time
afterwards, why he was so deeply stirred by what she had said, and he
was quite mistaken in fancying that it was merely her courage that
touched his heart. In the meanwhile, he was clearly sensible of at
least a great pity for her.

"Well," he told her, "we can look at things openly, and not try to
persuade ourselves that they're something else. I think that is one of
the things that you have taught me. Now, suppose I haven't any
expectation of the kind you mention. How does that count? Didn't you
take me in when you found me lying in the snow? Isn't it practically
certain that I owe my life to you? Admitting all that, is there any
reason why you shouldn't permit me to offer you a trifling favour, not
for your own sake, but your father's?"

He broke off for a moment with a forceful gesture. "I might, no doubt,
have suppressed all this and made some conventional answer, but, you
see, one has to be honest with you. Can you persuade yourself that I
don't know what you have to bear at the ranch, and how your father's
moody discontent must burden you? Isn't it clear that if he takes an
interest in this project and forgets to worry about his little
troubles, it will make life easier for both of you?"

Laura looked at him curiously. "After all, it is my life. Why should
you be so anxious to make it easier?"

The question troubled Nasmyth. It seemed to go beyond the reason he
had offered her a moment or two earlier. Indeed, it flashed upon him
that the fact that he certainly owed a good deal to her was not in
itself quite sufficient to account for the anxiety he felt.

"Well," he answered, "if the grounds I mentioned don't appear to
warrant my doing what I did, I can't at the moment think of anything
more convincing. It's one consolation that you couldn't upset the
little arrangement now, if you wanted to. Your father's going into the
thing headlong."

Somewhat to his astonishment the girl appeared embarrassed as she
glanced away from h