and. "He has to work, and a lot of those others would be a lot
more worth asking, if they had to work, too. I wish every man had
to--work--hard; had to work until body and brain were numb with it!"
Her voice slurred and she recovered it. "I don't know whether he
remembers or not. Probably not! You've just had a unique experience
for one of our kind, that's all. You've met a man!"

Barbara raised herself upon one elbow.

"You don't mean to infer, do you, Miriam," she reproved, "that Archie
Wickersham or my other friends, or--or Garry, aren't men?"

"Males!" snapped the other girl. "Just males! But"--and she seemed to
be arguing with herself--"but Garry might have been, though--he might
have been!"

Barbara lay awake a long time, pondering.

"It's odd," she murmured once, "but we did seem so--so congenial. I
can't remember when my brain has been so quick to catch a thought or
supplement one. Have you ever wondered, Miriam, why we--we can't seem
to marry one who brings out the best in us, like that?"

"Can't? You mean, dear child, that we don't! Some of us because the
'best that is in us' is far, far too decently unexciting for daily
diet. And some of us--oh, just because we haven't the sand and
backbone, I guess!"

But Barbara was too nearly asleep to catch the bitterness of that
reply. Just once again, before she slept, she asked a question.

"Should I have told Mr. O'Mara that my engagement to Archibald
Wickersham was to be announced at the party?" she murmured.

"Why should you have?" Miriam crisply wanted to know.

"Oh, I don't know," she mused. "Only I thought he might be interested.
You don't seem to realize that we are--very old friends!"

And long after Barbara was sound asleep, her face buried in the palm of
one hand, Miriam Burrell lay stiffly awake. Once she smiled a little,
for such perplexities which, of themselves, must work out inevitably.
When dawn came it found her still struggling stubbornly with her own,
for which it seemed there could be no solution now.

CHAPTER VIII

GREETINGS, SIR GALLAHAD!

It was late that night when Steve climbed into the rig which was
waiting with Pat Joe at the reins and they turned north into the hills.
For he had remained with Caleb and Miss Sarah long after the logs in
the fireplace had crumbled away to a flaky ash, discussing that
ink-smeared record which Caleb himself had ridden to find, ten years
before, in the shack up-river. And t