reached the edge of the snows, and for a time they stood in silence
looking their last upon the valley below them. The older boy drew his
thin hand from Kincaid's big palm and touched the gun swinging in its
holster on his hip.

"Do they cost much, a gun like this?"

"Not much, boy. Why?"

The younger answered for him, smiling at the shrewdness of his guess.

"I know. He's goin' to hunt for father when he's big."

There was no answering smile upon his brother's face, the gravity of
manhood sat strangely upon it as he answered without boastfulness or
bitterness but rather in the tone of one who speaks of a duty:

"I'm goin' to find him, m'sieu, and when I do I'll get him _sure_!"

Dick Kincaid regarded him for a moment from the shadow of his
wide-brimmed hat.

"If you do, boy, and I find it out, I don't know as I'll give you
away."

II

THE HUMOR OF THE FATE LACHESIS

What possible connection, however remote, this tragedy of the Bitter
Root Mountains could have with the future of Doctor Emma Harpe, who,
nearly twenty years later, sat at a pine table in a forlorn Nebraska
town filling out a death certificate, or what part it could play in the
life of Essie Tisdale, the belle of the still smaller frontier town of
Crowheart, in a distant State, who at the moment was cleaning her white
slippers with gasoline, only the Fate Lachesis spinning the thread of
human life from Clotho's distaff could foresee.

When Dr. Harpe, whose fingers were cold with nervousness, made tremulous
strokes which caused the words to look like a forgery, the ugly Fate
Lachesis grinned, and grinned again when Essie Tisdale, many hundred
miles away, held the slipper up before her and dimpled at its arched
smallness; then Lachesis rearranged her threads.

Dr. Harpe arose when the certificate was blotted and, thrusting her
hands deep in the pockets of her loose, square-cut coat, made a turn or
two the length of the office, walking with the long strides of a man.
Unexpectedly her pallid, clear-cut features crumpled, the strained
muscles relaxed, and she dropped into a chair, her elbows on her knees,
her feet wide apart, her face buried in her hands. She was unfeminine
even in her tears.

Alice Freoff was dead! Alice Freoff was dead! Dr. Harpe was still numb
with the chilling shock of it. She had not expected it. Such a result
had not entered into her calculations--not until she had seen her best
friend slipping into the other wor