hesitating,
half-expressed intention of entering the dwelling.

"Champers would pull up another man's stakes and drive them into his own
ground if he wanted them, but that Thomas Smith would drive them through
the other fellow's body if nobody else was around," was the doctor's
mental comment as he went outside and watched the course of the two men
till the twilight gathered them in.

* * * * *

When the turning point came to the sick man, the up-climb was marvelous,
as his powers of recoil asserted themselves.

"It is just a matter of self-control and good spirits now, Shirley, and
you have both," Dr. Carey said, as he sat by his patient on the ninth day.

"You staid the game out, Carey," Shirley said with an undertone of
hopelessness behind his smile. "What possessed you to happen in, anyhow?"

"I was possessed not to come and turned back after I'd started. If I
hadn't met Mrs. Aydelot coming after me I'd have rampsed off up on Big
Wolf Creek for a week, maybe, and missed your case entirely."

"And likewise my big fee," Jim interrupted. "Some men are born lucky. And
so Mrs. Aydelot went after you. Asher's a fortunate man to have a wife
like Virginia, although he had to give up an inheritance for her."

"How was that?" Carey asked, glad to see the hopeless look leaving Jim's
eyes.

"Oh, it's a pretty long story for a sick man. The mere facts are that
Asher Aydelot was to have bank stock, a good paying hotel, and a splendid
big farm if he'd promise never to marry any descendant of Jerome Thaine,
of Virginia. Asher hiked out West and enlisted in the cavalry and did
United States scout duty for two years, hoping to forget Virginia Thaine,
who is a descendant of this Jerome Thaine. But it wasn't any use. Distance
don't count, you know, in cases like that."

"Yes, I know."

Shirley was too sick to notice Dr. Carey's face, and he did not remember
afterward how low and hard those three words sounded.

"It seems Virginia had pulled Asher through a fever in a Rebel hospital,
and we all love our nurses." Jim patted the doctor's knee as he said this.
"And when the father's will was read out against ever, ever, ever his son
marrying a Thaine, Asher promptly said that the whole inheritance, bank
stock, hotel, and farm, might go where--the old man Aydelot had already
gone--maybe. Anyhow, he married Virginia Thaine and she was game to come
out here and pioneer on a Grass River c