for you," she added. "You'd be shivering on the Equator. You were always
hugging the stove at Lumley's."

"Things was pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong
look at his father.

She saw the look, her face flashed with sudden temper, then her eyes
fell on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed
herself.

"There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she
said brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then
something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard,
dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there,
at the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.

"Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied
Black Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put
some more wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider,
grimly watched and listened.

"Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked almost abstractedly.

"Jim's dead-shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered
Black Andy suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one
of our hands on the place; and Abner is in jail."

"Abner-in jail!" she exclaimed in a dazed way. "What did he do? Abner
always seemed so straight."

"Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway people's money.
They caught him, and he got seven years."

"He was married, wasn't he?" she asked in a low voice. "Yes, to Phenie
Tyson. There's no children, so she's all right, and divorce is cheap
over in the States, where she is now."

"Phenie Tyson didn't marry Abner because he was a saint, but because he
was a man, I suppose," she replied gravely. "And the old folks?"

"Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to his grave. But Abner's
mother died a year before."

"What Abner done killed his father," said Abel Baragar with dry
emphasis. "Phenie Tyson was extravagant-wanted this and that, and
nothin' was too good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin' her what she
wanted; and it broke old Ezra Lumley's heart."

George's wife looked at him for a moment with her eyes screwed up, and
then she laughed softly. "My, it's curious how some folks go up and some
go down! It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for Abner
to get free.... I had the happiest time in my life at Lumley's. I was
getting better of my-cold. While I was there I got lots of strength
stored up, to l