f winter nights.
There was the same melancholy of isolation in Agnes' eyes today as he
had seen in theirs; the same sad hopelessness; the same hunger, and the
longing to fly from the wilderness and its hardships, heart-weariness,
and pain.

Her hand lay appealingly upon his shoulder for a moment before he
mounted, and her face was turned up to him, unspoken yearning on her
lips.

"Promise me again before you go that you will come back here before you
relinquish your homestead to Boyle," she demanded. "Promise me that, no
matter what the lawyer's opinion may be, you'll return here before you
do anything else at all."

"I promise you," said he.

When he had ridden a little way he halted his horse and turned in his
saddle to look back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed,
her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little
while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten
something--some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his
heart dumbly.

Yet a sincere man seldom knows these things, which a trifler is so quick
to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough
to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he
rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins loose in his hand.

CHAPTER XVII

A PLAN

The man who had supplied the horse-blanket for covering the dead
sheep-herder had taken it away, but the board upon which they had
stretched him still lay under the tree where they had left it. There was
blood on it where the wound had drained, a disturbing sight which
persisted in meeting Agnes' eye every time she came out of the tent. She
was debating in her mind whether to throw the board in the river or
split it up and burn it in the stove, when Smith came along and claimed
it.

"Scarce as wood's goin' to be in this valley six months from now," Smith
remarked, rubbing dust over the stain which did not appear to give him
any qualms, "a man's got to take care of it. That's a shelf out of my
store."

"I don't suppose you'll ever put goods on it again."

"Sure. Why not?"

"Well, not groceries, at any rate," she ventured.

"It won't hurt canned goods," Smith told her, turning it stain downward.
"Doctor gone back?"

"He's gone on to Meander on some business."

"Smart feller," commended Smith. "If I had to have my leg took off I'd
just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ever saw."

"I