was hunting for him when I found her laying
low here, don't you understand? You stare so. It is Lee Holly and--
Ah--my--God!"

The last words were gurgled in his throat; his face whitened, and he sank
to the ground as though his bones had suddenly been converted into
jelly--a strange, shapeless heap of humanity as he lay at Overton's feet.
Overton bent over him, and after a moment of blank amaze, lifted the
helpless head, and almost dropped it again, when the eyes, appealing and
keenly conscious, met his own. There was a queer chuckling sound in the
man's throat; he was trying to speak, but could not. The secret he was
trying to tell was buried back of those speechless lips, and one more
stroke of the doom he feared had overtaken him.

CHAPTER X.

THE STRANGER'S LOVE STORY.

'Tana sat alone in her room a few hours later, and from the window watched
the form of Ora Harrison disappear along the street. The latter had been
sent by her father with some medicine for the paralyzed stranger, and the
girls had chatted of the school 'Tana was to attend, and of the schools
Ora had gone to and all the friends she remembered there, who now sent her
such kind letters. Ora told 'Tana of the lovely time she expected to have
when the steamers would come up from Bonner's Ferry to the Kootenai Lake
region, for then her friends were to come in the summers, and the warm
months were to be like holidays.

All this girlish frankness, all the cheery friendship of the doctor's
family filled 'Tana with a wild unrest against herself--against the
world.

"It would be easy to be good if a person lived like that always," she
thought, "in a nice home, with a mother to kiss me and a father I was not
ashamed of. I felt stupid when they talked to me. I could only think how
happy they were, and that they did not seem to know it. And Ora was sweet
and sorry for me because my parents were dead. Huh!" she grunted,
disdainfully, in the Indian fashion peculiar to her at times. "If she knew
how I felt about it she'd hate me, I suppose. They'd all think I was bad
clear through. They wouldn't understand the reason--no nice women like
them could. Oh, if the school would only make me nice like that! But I
suppose it's got to be born in people, and I was born different."

Even this reason did not render her more resigned; and, to add to her
disquiet, there came to her the memory of eyes whose gaze made her
shiver--the eyes of the stranger whom Overt