eak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.

"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"

One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
vest absently.

"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.

"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."

"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"

Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.

"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."

Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
the former position.

"What else do you know?" he asked.

Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.

"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
been expecting it to catch up with me for years."

"Your father died of it, you say?"

"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himsel