ing wholesomely a good part of his time. Altogether,
unless for some unseen contingency, the doctor prophesied that the
sheepman was going to upset the probabilities and get well.

"Which merely shows, ma'am, what is possible when you give a sound man
twenty-four hours a day in our hills for a few years," he added. "Thanks
to your nursing he's going to shave through by the narrowest margin
possible. I told him to-day that he owed his life to you, Miss
Messiter."

"I don't think you need have told him that Doctor," returned that young
woman, not a little vexed at him, "especially since you have just been
telling me that he owes it to Wyoming air and his own soundness of
constitution."

When she returned to the sickroom to give her patient his medicine
he wanted to tell her what the doctor had said, but she cut him off
ruthlessly and told him not to talk.

"Mayn't I even say 'Thank you?'" he wanted to know.

"No; you talk far too much as it is."

He smiled "All right. Y'u sit there in that chair, where I can see y'u
doing that fancywork and I'll not say a word. It'll keep, all right,
what I want to say."

"I notice you keep talking," she told him, dryly.

"Yes, ma'am. Y'u had better have let me say what I wanted to, but I'll
be good now."

He fell asleep watching her, and when he awoke she was still sitting
there, though it was beginning to grow dark. He spoke before she knew he
was awake.

"I'm going to get well, the doctor thinks."

"Yes, he told me," she answered.

"Did he tell y'u it was your nursing saved me?"

"Please don't think about that."

"What am I to think about? I owe y'u a heap, and it keeps piling up. I
reckon y'u do it all because it's your Christian duty?" he demanded.

"It is my duty, isn't it?"

"I didn't say it wasn't, though I expaict Bighorn County will forget to
give y'u a unanimous vote of thanks for doing it. I asked if y'u did it
because it was your duty?"

"The reason doesn't matter so that I do it," she answered, steadily.

"Reasons matter some, too, though they ain't as important as actions out
in this country. Back in Boston they figure more, and since y'u used to
go to school back there y'u hadn't ought to throw down your professor of
ethics."

"Don't you think you have talked enough for the present?" she smiled,
and added: "If I make you talk whenever I sit beside you I shall have to
stay away."

"That's where y'u've ce'tainly got the drop on me, ma'am. I'm a cla