ld out! Clarence turned
hastily away.

"We don't know where he went," continued Gilroy grimly, "but I reckon
you ain't over anxious to see him NOW. And I kin tell ye something to
ease your mind,--he didn't require much persuadin'. And I kin tell ye
another, if ye ain't above takin' advice from folks that don't pertend
to give it," he added, with the same curious look of interest in his
face. "You've done well to get shut of him, and if you got shut of a few
more of his kind that you trust to, you'd do better."

As if to avoid noticing any angry reply from the young man, he reentered
the cabin and shut the door behind him. Clarence felt the uselessness of
further parley, and rode away.

But Gilroy's Parthian arrow rankled as he rode. He was not greatly
shocked at Jim's defection, for he was always fully conscious of
his vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim's
extravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and,
perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicial
to others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfish
natures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion's weakness
in his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim on
the land, to subject his singular temperament to the temptations of
such a life and such surroundings; he should never have made use of his
services at the rancho. He had done him harm rather than good in his
ill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have said
that Gilroy's parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly.
It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint or
corrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For in
Gilroy's warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatality
had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought
no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed
to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it
now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at
the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as
it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his
father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding
onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixed
upon some vague point between his horse's sensitive ears, when a sudden,
intelligent, forwar