again. Elinor said she left Lagonda Ledge last summer."

"Where's the other place?" Burgess would change the subject.

"It i's a little shaft of blue smoke from a wood fire rising above
those rocky places across the river. I've seen it so often, at irregular
times, that I've grown interested in it, but I have missed it since I
came back. It's like losing a friend. Every man has his vagaries. One of
mine is this friendship with the symbols of human homes."

Burgess offered no comment in response. He could not see that the time
had come to tell Fenneben what Bond Saxon had confided to him about the
man below the smoke. So he left the hilltop and went down to the Saxon
House. He wanted to see Dennie, but found her father instead.

"That woman's left Pigeon Place again," Saxon said. "Went early this
morning. It's freedom for me when I don't have to think of them two.
Thinking of myself is slavery enough."

Burgess loitered aimlessly about the doorway for a while. It was a mild
afternoon, with no hint of winter, nor Christmas glitter of ice and snow
about it. Just a glorious finishing of an idyllic Kansas autumn rounding
out in the beauty of a sunshiny mid-December day. But to the man who
stood there, waiting for nothing at all, the day was a mockery. Behind
the fine scholarly face a storm was raging and there was only one friend
whom he could trust--Dennie.

"Let's go walking, you and me!"

Bug Buler put up one hand to Burgess, while he clutched a little red
ball in the other. Bug had an irresistible child voice and child touch,
and Burgess yielded to their leading. He had not realized until now
how lonely he was, and Bug was companionable by intuition and a stanch
little stroller.

North of town the river lay glistening between its vine-draped banks.
The two paused at the bend where Fenneben had been hurled almost to his
doom, and Burgess remembered the darkness, and the rain, and the limp
body he had held. He thought Fenneben was dead then, and even in that
moment he had felt a sense of disloyalty to Dennie as he realized that
he must think of Elinor entirely now. But why not? He had come to Kansas
for this very thinking. It must be his life purpose now.

Today Burgess began to wonder why Elinor must have a life of ease
provided for her and Dennie Saxon ask for nothing. Why should Joshua
Wream's conscience be his burden, too? Then he hated himself a little
more than ever, and duty and manly honor began their wre