ou an excuse for
breaking off all connection with this girl. I am sorry for her, Ross, but
you can't marry her. You must not--you must not! Ride over and see us
soon, and we will talk it all out together."

He opened another letter, but did not read it. He was too profoundly
shaken by the first. He felt the pure friendship, the fine faith, and the
guardianship of the writer, and he acknowledged the good sense of all she
said, and yet--and yet--

When he looked up Swenson was staring down at him with a face of such
bitterness that it broke through even the absorbed and selfish meditation
into which he had been thrown.

"What's the matter, Swenson? You look as if you had lost a friend."

"I have," answered the guard, shortly, "and so have you. The chief is
out."

"What?"

"They've got him!" he exclaimed. "He's out."

Cavanagh sprang up. "I don't believe it! For what reason? Why?"

"Don't that letter tell you? The whole town is chuckling. Every criminal
and plug-ugly in the country is spitting in our faces this morning. Yes,
sir, the President has fired the chief--the man that built up this
Forestry Service. The whole works is goin' to hell, that's what it is.
We'll have all the coal thieves, water-power thieves, poachers, and
free-grass pirates piling in on us in mobs. They'll eat up the forest. I
see the finish of the whole business. They'll put some Western man in,
somebody they can work. Then where will we be?"

Cavanagh's young heart burned with indignation, but he tried to check the
other man's torrent of protest.

"I can't believe it. There's some mistake. Maybe they've made him the
secretary of the department or something."

"No, they haven't. They've thrown him out. They've downed him because he
tried to head off some thievery of coal-mines in Alaska." The man was
ready to weep with chagrin and indignant sorrow. His voice choked, and he
turned away to conceal his emotion.

Cavanagh put the letter back into his pocket and mounted his horse. "Well,
go on back to your work, Swenson. I'm going to town to get the Supervisor
on the wire, and find out what it all means."

He was almost as badly stunned by the significance of Swenson's news as
Swenson himself. Could it be possible that the man who had built up the
field service of the bureau--the man whose clean-handed patriotism had
held the boys together, making them every year more clearly a unit, a
little army of enthusiasts--could it be possible that