e symptoms, y'self, boss?"

Travis flushed:

"Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it--and I'm going to
take her with me, or die trying."

Jud laughed again: "Leave it to me--I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow."

That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was
ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his
shaggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he
spat on the floor disgustedly.

"Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?"

The big bowed glasses looked at him quietly and nodded affirmatively.

"Wal, then," went on Jud, "I come to git you to do a job of surveying
for the mill. It's a lot of timber land on the other side of the
mountain--some twenty miles off. The Company's bought five thousand
acres of wood and they want it surveyed. What'll you charge?"

Clay thought a moment: "Going and coming, on horse-back--it will take
me a week," said Clay thoughtfully. "I shall charge a hundred
dollars."

"An' will you go right away--to-morrow mornin'?"

Clay nodded.

"Here's fifty of it," said Jud--"the Company is in a hurry. We want
the survey by this day week. Let me see, this is Sat'dy--I'll come
next Sat'dy night."

Clay's face flushed. Never before had he made a hundred dollars in a
week.

"I'll go at once."

"To-morrow at daylight?" asked Jud, rising.

Clay looked at him curiously. There was something in the tone of the
man that struck him as peculiar, but Jud went on in an easy way.

"You see we must have it quick. All our winter wood to run the mill
is there an' we can't start into cordin' till it's surveyed an' the
deed's passed. Sorry to hurry you"--

Clay promised to start at daylight and Jud left.

He looked at his watch. It was late. He would like to tell Helen
about it--he said aloud: "Making a hundred dollars a week. If I could
only keep up that--I'd--I'd--"

He blushed. And then he turned quietly and went to bed. And that was
why Helen wondered the next day and the next, and all the next week
why she did not see Clay, why he did not come, nor write, nor send
her a message. And wondering the pang of it went into her hardening
heart.

CHAPTER XII

IN THYSELF THERE IS WEAKNESS

It was the middle of Saturday afternoon, and all the week Edward
Conway had fought against the terrible thirst which was in him. Not
since Monday morning had he touched whiskey at all, and now he walked
the streets of the litt