rom a baby. He brought me up. I owe him--my life.... I've no
relation--no mother--no father! No one loves me--for myself!"

"Nobody loves you!" echoed Wade, with an exquisite tone of repudiation.
"Strange how people fool themselves! Lass, you're huggin' your troubles
too hard. An' you're wrong. Why, everybody loves you! Lem an' Jim--why
you just brighten the hard world they live in. An' that poor, hot-headed
Jack--he loves you as well as he can love anythin'. An' the old man--no
daughter could be loved more.... An' I--I love you, lass, just like--as
if you--might have been my own. I'm goin' to be the friend--the brother
you need. An' I reckon I can come somewheres near bein' a mother, if
you'll let me."

Something, some subtle power or charm, stole over Columbine, assuaging
her terrible sense of loss, of grief. There was tenderness in this man's
hands, in his voice, and through them throbbed strong and passionate
life and spirit.

"Do you really love me--_love_ me?" she whispered, somehow comforted,
somehow feeling that what he offered was what she had missed as a child.
"And you want to be all that for me?"

"Yes, lass, an' I reckon you'd better try me."

"Oh, how good you are! I felt that--the very first time I was with you.
I've wanted to come to you--to tell you my troubles. I love dad and he
loves me, but he doesn't understand. Dad is wrapped up in his son. I've
had no one. I never had any one."

"You have some one now," returned Wade, with a rich, deep mellowness in
his voice that soothed Columbine and made her wonder. "An' because I've
been through so much I can tell you what'll help you.... Lass, if a
woman isn't big an' brave, how will a man ever be? There's more in women
than in men. Life has given you a hard knock, placin' you here--no real
parents--an' makin' you responsible to a man whose only fault is blinded
love for his son. Well, you've got to meet it, face it, with what a
woman has more of than any man. Courage! Suppose you do hate this
Buster Jack. Suppose you do love this poor, crippled Wilson Moore....
Lass, don't look like that! Don't deny. You do love that boy.... Well,
it's hell. But you can never tell what'll happen when you're honest and
square. If you feel it your duty to pay your debt to the old man you
call dad--to pay it by marryin' his son, why do it, an' be a woman.
There's nothin' as great as a woman can be. There's happiness that comes
in strange, unheard-of ways. There's more in