uch?"

"Yes," said Jim. "That's why I'm awkward."

Carrie gave him a quick glance and turned her head. The firelight
touched his face and she noted his grave sympathy.

"Oh!" she said, "I'm a silly little fool! I would come--although I
knew you didn't want me."

"I thought you would find things hard," Jim replied, with some
embarrassment.

"I do find them hard; that's the trouble, because they're really not
hard. The fault's mine; I haven't enough grit."

"You are full of grit," Jim declared. "I've known men knocked out by
an easier journey."

"You're trying to be nice and I don't like that. I didn't want you to
come just now, but since you have come, sit down and smoke. I meant to
be a partner and help you both along."

"But you have helped----"

Carrie looked up quickly. "Oh, you are dull! You don't see I want to
confess. It's sometimes a comfort to make yourself look as mean as
possible. Afterwards you begin to imagine you're perhaps not quite so
bad."

"I don't know if it's worth while to bother about such things," Jim
remarked.

"You don't bother. When you're on the trail, you're occupied about the
horses and how far you can go. Nothing else matters, and Jake, of
course, never bothers at all. He grins. But I insisted on coming and
when the man at the hotel wanted to buy you off I made you refuse. You
know I did. You were hesitating."

"On the whole, I'm glad you were firm."

"It was easy to be firm at the hotel, but I ought to have kept it up.
I was vain and sure of myself, when I'd come up in a wagon, over a
graded road."

"The road was pretty bad," said Jim.

"Anyhow, it was a road and I sat in a wagon," Carrie rejoined. "When
the road stopped and we hit the real wild country, I got frightened,
like a child. What use is there in starting out, if you can't go on?"

"You have gone on. I don't think many girls from the cities would have
borne the journey with an outfit like ours. But I don't quite get your
object for leaving home."

"Ah," said Carrie, "you have done what you wanted, although it was
perhaps hard. You have tasted adventure, seen the wild North, and
found gold. You haven't known monotony, done dreary things that never
change, and tried to make fifty cents go as far as a dollar. If you
had talents, you could use them, but it wasn't like that with me. I
don't know if I have talent, but I felt I could do something better
than bake biscuit and sell cheap gro