ds on the other side of the stream. The tender grace
of the girl's attitude, her air of waiting, of anxiety, of readiness to
serve, made him question the basis of his family pride. He recognized in
her the spirit of her sire, tempered, sweetened, made more stable, by
something drawn from unknown sources. At the moment he felt that Lee was
not merely his equal but his superior in purity of character and in
purpose. "What nonsense we talk of heredity, of family," he thought.

Standing over the wasted body of his patient, he asked again: "Why let
even Lize know? To her Ed Wetherford is dead. She remembers him now as a
young, dashing, powerful horseman, a splendid animal, a picturesque lover.
Why wring her heart by permitting her to see this wreck of what was once
her pride?"

As for Wetherford himself, nothing mattered very much. He spoke of the
past now and then, but not in the phrase of one who longs for the return
of happy days--rather in the voice of one who murmurs a half-forgotten
song. He called no more for his wife and child, and if he had done so
Cavanagh would have reasoned that the call arose out of weakness, and that
his better self, his real self, would still desire to shield his secret
from his daughter.

And this was true, for during one of his clearest moments Wetherford
repeated his wish to die a stranger. "I'm goin' out like the old-time
West, a rag of what I once was. Don't let them know--put no name over
me--just say: 'An old cow-puncher lies here.'"

Cavanagh's attempt to change his hopeless tone proved unavailing.
Enfeebled by his hardships and his prison life, he had little reserve
force upon which to draw in fighting such an enemy. He sank soon after
this little speech into a coma which continued to hold him in its unbroken
grasp as night fell.

Meantime, seeing no chance of aiding the ranger, Redfield and the Forester
prepared to return, but Lee, reinforced by her mother, refused to
accompany them. "I shall stay here," she said, "till he is safely out of
it--till I _know_ that he is beyond all danger."

Redfield did not urge her to return as vigorously as Dalton expected him
to do, but when he understood the girl's desire to be near her lover, he
took off his hat and bowed to her. "You are entirely in the right," he
said. "Here is where you belong."

Redfield honored Lize for her sympathetic support of her daughter's
resolution, and expressed his belief that Ross would escape the plague. "I