y had come to a close. Without Agnes it would be incomplete, as
without her there would be missing a most important part in the future
pattern of his life. He could not go without Agnes, although he had
nothing yet of success to offer her.

But that was on the way. The knocks which he had taken there in those
few weeks had cracked the insulation of hopelessness which the frost of
his profitless years had thickened upon him. Now it had fallen away,
leaving him light and fresh for the battle.

Agnes had said little about the money which Dr. Slavens had taken from
Shanklin at the gambler's own crooked game. Whether she countenanced it
or not, Slavens did not know. Perhaps it was not honest money, in every
application of the term, but it was entirely current, and there was a
most comfortable sense in the feel of it there bulked in the inner
pocket of his coat. He had no qualms nor scruples about it at all. Fate
had put it in his hands for the carrying out of his long-deferred
desires. If it hadn't worked honestly for Shanklin, it was about to set
in for a mighty reformation.

But there was the trouble of Agnes' absence, which persisted between him
and sleep when he arranged himself in his blankets. He turned with it,
and sighed and worked himself into a fever of anxiety. Many times he got
up and listened for the sound of hoofs, to go back to his tent and tell
himself that it was unreasonable to think that she would ride by night
over that lonely road.

When morning began to creep in it brought with it a certain assurance
that all was well with her, as daylight often brings its deceptive
consolation to a heart that suffers the tortures of despair in the dark.
Sleep caught him then, and held him past the hour that he had set for
its bound. When he awoke the sun was shining over the cold ashes of his
last night's fire.

Slavens got up with a deeper feeling of resentment against Boyle than he
ever had felt for any man. It seemed to come over him unaccountably,
like a disagreeable sound, or a chill from a contrary wind. It was not a
pettish humor, but a deep, grave feeling of hatred, as if the germ of it
had grown in the blood and spread to every tissue of his body. The
thought of Boyle's being so near him was discordant. It pressed on him
with a sense of being near some unfit thing which should be removed.

Dr. Slavens never had carried arms in his life, and he had no means of
buckling Hun Shanklin's old revolver about hi