* * * * *

Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with a
shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him a
sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.

"Oh, Jim," she said, playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"

"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there
in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of
eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman riding
toward the post--riding hard.

"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted....
I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See, he's
been riding hard and long--you can tell by the way the horse drops his
legs. He sags a bit himself.... But isn't it beautiful, all that out
there--the real quintessence of life."

The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled,
and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of
leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air,
energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that
broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag
by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over
which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right.

"You had a big thought when you brought me here, guinea-girl," he added,
presently. "We are going to win out here"--he set the child down--"you and
I and this lucky sixpence." He took up his short fur coat. "Yes, we'll
win, honey." Then, with a brooding look in his face, he added:

"'The end comes as came the beginning,
And shadows fail into the past;
And the goal, is it not worth the winning,
If it brings us but home at the last?
While far through the pain of waste places
We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod
That drives us to grace from disgraces,
From the fens to the gardens of God!'"

He paused reflectively. "It's strange that this life up her