g the fever in a prison hospital. He knew her
talent for helping, and he had fairly estimated her quick ingenuity for
this sod house emergency. But a new vision of the plains life came to her
as she watched him, gentle-handed, swift, but unhurried, never giving an
inch to the enemy in fighting with death for the life of Jim Shirley.

"He's safe from that congestion," Asher said when the morning broke. "But
his fever will come on now."

"Where did you learn to do all these things for sick people?" Virginia
asked.

"Partly from a hospital nurse I had in the war. Also, it's a part of the
game here. I learned a few things fighting the cholera in sixty-seven. We
must look everything on the frontier squarely in the face, danger and
death along with the rest, just as we have to do everywhere else, only we
have to depend on each other more here. Hold on there, Jim!"

Asher sprang toward Shirley, who was sitting upright, staring wildly at
the two. Then a struggle began, for the sick man, crazed with delirium,
was bent on driving his helpers from the cabin. When he lay back exhausted
at length, Asher turned to his wife.

"One of us must go to Carey's Crossing for a doctor. You can't hold Jim.
It's all I can do to hold him. But it's a long way to Carey's. Can you
go?"

"I'll try," Virginia replied. And Asher remembered what Jim had said on
the windy September day: "She's as good a woman as we are men."

"You must take Pilot with you and leave him at home. You can't get lost,
for you know the way up to the main trail, and that runs straight to the
Crossing. Dr. Carey knows Jim, and he will come if he can, I am sure. He
pulled Jim back once a year or two ago when the pneumonia had him. Heaven
keep you safe, you brave little soul. Jim may turn the trick for us some
day."

He kissed her good-by and watched her gallop away on her errand of mercy.

"The men will have all the credit by and by for settling this country.
Little glory will come to their wives," he thought. "And yet, the women
make anchor for every hearthstone, and share in every deed of daring and
every test of endurance. God make me worthy of such a wife!"

Virginia Aydelot had spoken truly when she declared that the war had left
the Thaines little except inherited pride and the will to do as they
pleased. Inherited tendencies take varying turns. What had made a reformer
of old Jean Aydelot made a narrow bigot of his descendant, Francis. What
had made a proud, e