ld days they had not been very well off. The railway was not
completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought
and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin of
safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he was
shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his judgment
had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went away with
Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute, because the
thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge of a precipice.
He had won through it, but only by the merest shave, and it had all left
him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his "having religion."
Whenever he remembered George he instinctively thought of those black days
when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over the edge into the
chasm of failure, and came so near doing it. A few thousand dollars less
to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became
hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it
through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and
seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest,
and not a little uncertain as to truth--to which the old man shut his eyes
when there was a "deal" on--had, in the end, been of no use at all, and
had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had
put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things since she had
come to Lumley's, and, being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those
he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had
given him an arrogance unduly emphasized by a reputation for rigid virtue
and honesty. The indirect attack which Andrew now made on George's memory
roused him to anger, as much because it seemed to challenge his own
judgment as cast a slight on the name of the boy whom he had cast off, yet
who had a firmer hold on his heart than any human being ever had. It had
only been pride which had prevented him from making it up with George
before it was too late; but, all the more, he was set against the woman
who "kicked up her heels for a living"; and, all the more, he resented
Black Andy, who, in his own grim way, had managed to remain a partner with
him in their present prosperity, and had done so little for it.

"George helped to make what you've got," he said, darkly, now. "The West
missed George. The Wes