ps of his pack.

"It looks pretty much that way, Benjamin. When a man's got all he wants,
it's time for him to lope. If he stays, he might get more and
possibly--less."

"What will I do with these sacks?" Bennie asked hurriedly, as Zephyr
passed through the door.

Zephyr made no reply, further than softly to whistle _Break the News to
Mother_ as he swung into the trail. He clumped sturdily along,
apparently unmindful of the rarefied air that would ordinarily make an
unburdened man gasp for breath. His lips were still pursed, though they
had ceased to give forth sound. He came to the nearly level terrace
whereon, among scattered boulders, were clustered the squat shanties of
the town of Pandora.

He merely glanced at the Blue Goose, whose polished windows were just
beginning to glow with the light of the rising sun. He saw a door open
at the far end of the house and Madame La Martine emerge, a broom in her
hands and a dust-cloth thrown over one shoulder.

Pierre's labours ended late. Madame's began very early. Both had an
unvarying procession. Pierre had much hilarious company; it was his
business to keep it so. He likewise had many comforting thoughts; these
cost him no effort. The latter came as a logical sequence to the former.
Madame had no company, hilarious or otherwise. Instead of complacent
thoughts, she had anxiety. And so it came to pass that, while Pierre
grew sleek and smooth with the passing of years, Madame developed many
wrinkles and grey hairs and a frightened look, from the proffering of
wares that were usually thrust aside with threatening snarls and many
harsh words. Pierre was not alone in the unstinted pouring forth of the
wine of pleasure for the good of his companions and in uncorking his
vials of wrath for the benefit of his wife.

Zephyr read the whole dreary life at a glance. A fleeting thought came
to Zephyr. How would it have been with Madame had she years ago chosen
him instead of Pierre? A smile, half pitying, half contemptuous, was
suggested by an undecided quiver of the muscles of his face, more
pronounced by the light in his expressive eyes. He left the waggon trail
that zig-zagged up the steep grade beyond the outskirts of the town,
cutting across their sharp angles in a straight line. Near the foot of
an almost perpendicular cliff he again picked up the trail. Through a
notch in the brow of the cliff a solid bar of water shot forth. The
solid bar, in its fall broken to a misty sp