, and presently knocked at the doctor's
door.

"Time's up, and I thought I'd better rouse you," he said. "Shall I go
in, and look at your patient?"

The doctor rose up fully dressed, and Seaforth, who watched him enter
the other room, nodded to himself, while the man he had left stooped
above the sleeping pair and smiled with a great contentment. He had
done what he could, but he knew that a greater power than any he
wielded had driven back the dark angel which had stooped above the sick
man's bed.

The sun was in the heavens when, finding other procedure unavailing, he
gently touched the girl, and Alice Deringham rose silently and turned
to him some moments later almost proudly with a soft glow in her
cheeks, and a question in her eyes.

"Yes," said the doctor, smiling. "I fancy we have seen the worst."

Then the girl's strength went from her, and she caught at the rail of
the bed, shivering, until the man touched her arm and led her from the
room. "You have done a great deal, I think, and must sleep," he said.

It was afternoon when Alice Deringham resumed her watch, and she met
Seaforth on her way to the sick man's room.

"I want to thank you, Miss Deringham. He is my partner, and the only
friend I have," he said, with a slight huskiness.

The girl regarded him steadily. "You mean it?"

Seaforth winced a little. "Yes," he said.

Alice Deringham still fixed her eyes upon him. "And yet you distrusted
me once?"

Seaforth's face was haggard, but it was less pale than it had been when
he bent his head. "I can only throw myself on your mercy. I was more
of a fool than usual then."

Alice Deringham laughed softly but graciously. "I could not blame
you--and you may have been right," she said.

Then she passed into the room, and saw the light creep into Alton's
eyes, which had apparently been fixed upon the door. Her blood tingled
and her neck grew hot, for it was evident that while his mind was clear
at last he remembered a little.

"The river is farther away now, but I want you still," he said.

CHAPTER XXIV

HALLAM TRIES AGAIN

There was frost in the valley when one clear morning Alton lay partly
dressed in a big chair beside the stove at Somasco ranch. Outside the
snow lay white on the clearing, and the great pines rose above it
sombre and motionless under the sunlight that had no warmth in it,
while the peaks beyond them shone with a silvery lustre against the
cloudless blue. It