hing where there was
nothing! Every one of its needles is counted in its cost of birth out of
the stubborn soil! And waiting all its life down there for the reward of
a look and a word of praise!"

"But," he went on, in the delight of hearing her voice in rebuttal, "the
big pines give us the masts of ships and they build houses and furnish
the kindling for the hardwood logs of the hearth!"

"The little pine makes no pretensions. It has done more. It has given us
something without which houses are empty: It has given us a thought!"

"True!" he exclaimed soberly, yielding. And now all the lively signals of
the impulse of action played on his face. "For your glance and your word
of praise it shall pay you tribute!" he cried. "I am going down to bring
you one of its clusters of spines."

"But, Jack, it is a dangerous climb--it is late! No! no!"

"No climb at all. It is easy if I work my way around by that ledge
yonder. I see stepping-places all the way."

How like him! While she thought only of the pine, he had been thinking
how to make a descent; how to conquer some physical difficulty. Already
he had started despite her protest.

"I don't want to rob the little pine!" she called, testily.

"I'll bring a needle, then!"

"Even every needle is precious!"

"I'll bring a dead one, then!"

There was no combatting him, she knew, when he was headstrong; and when
he was particularly headstrong he would laugh in his soft way. He was
laughing now as he took off his spurs and tossed them aside.

"No climbing in these cart-wheels, and I shall have to roll up my chaps!"

She went back to the precipice edge to prove to him, to prove to herself,
that she could stand there alone, without the moral support of anyone at
her side, and found that she could. She had mastered her weakness. It was
as if a new force had been born in her. She felt its stiffening in every
fibre as she saw him pass around the ledge and start down toward the
little pine; felt it as something which could build barriers and mount
them with an invulnerable guard.

How would he get past that steep shoulder? The worst obstacle confronted
him at the very beginning of the descent. He was hugging a rock face,
feeling his way, with nothing but a few inches of a projecting seam
between him and the darkness far below. His foot slipped, his body turned
half around, and she had a second of the horror that she had felt when
waiting for the sound of Leddy's shot in