urned towards him quickly. "Ah!" she said, "you are not
going to do what they proposed?"

"I'm sorry the thing they suggested was out of the question. You will
let me tell you what it was?"

Violet made a sign of assent, and Nasmyth spoke quietly for a minute
or two. Then a faint flush crept into the girl's cheeks and a sparkle
into her eyes.

"You said no!" she interrupted.

"I felt I had to. There seemed no other course open to me."

Violet looked at him in evident bewilderment, and Nasmyth spoke again
deprecatingly. "You see," he explained, "I felt I had to keep faith
with those ranchers."

"Didn't it occur to you that you had also to keep faith with me?" she
inquired sharply.

"I think that was the one thing I was trying to do."

Violet showed no sign of comprehension, and it was borne in upon
Nasmyth then that, in her place, Laura Waynefleet would have
understood the motives that had influenced him, and applauded them.

"My dear," he said, "can't you understand that you have laid an
obligation on me to play a creditable part? I couldn't turn my back on
my comrades now that they have mortgaged their possessions, and,
though I think Gordon or one of the others could lead them as well as
I could, when I asked them to join me, I tacitly pledged myself to
hold on until we were crushed or had achieved success."

He looked at her wistfully when he stopped speaking; but she made a
gesture of impatience.

"The one thing clear to me is that if you had done what Mr. Acton
suggested you could have lived in Victoria, and have seen me almost
whenever you wished," she declared. "Some of those ranchers must know
a good deal more about work of the kind you are doing than you do,
and, if you had explained it all to them, they would have released
you."

Nasmyth sighed. Apart from the obligation to his comrades, there were
other motives which had influenced him. He vaguely felt that it was
incumbent on him to prove his manhood in this arduous grapple with
Nature, and, after a purposeless life, to vindicate himself. The
wilderness, as Gordon had said, had also gotten hold of him, and that
described what had befallen him reasonably well. There are many men,
and among them men of education, in those Western forests who, having
once taken up the axe and drill, can never wholly let them go again.
These men grow restless and morose in the cities, which seldom hold
them long. The customs of civilization pall on them, and cont