the unfed blaze, and the days that followed had called for exertions
which would have taxed greater reserves of vitality. They had been days
of alternating blizzard and soggy thawing, and Larry Masters had been
constantly in the saddle like a commander who seeks to remedy a break
in his lines and must not pause to consider personal exposure. A cough
wracked him, and shifting pains gnawed at his joints and chest as he
rode the slippery roads. He shivered, and his teeth chattered when the
sleet lashed his face, and when at last he turned away from the
Lexington office where he had reported the matter in hand accomplished,
he had need to keep himself studiously in hand because a tide of fever
crept hotly along his arteries and blurred his senses into confusion.

When he could not rise from his bed in the bungalow to which he had
returned, a message went to Louisville, and his wife, somewhat
tight-lipped and silently resentful, yet with a stern sense of duty,
made the uncomfortable journey to Marlin Town, accompanied by a trained
nurse who would be very expensive. She tarried only until the doctor
said that the crisis was over, and then leaving the nurse behind came
back to Louisville, feeling that she had virtuously met a most annoying
obligation.

To Masters, with a sorry company of memories, which, in delirium, took
human shape and gibed at his self-esteem, the bedridden days were
irksome. But one morning the sick man awoke from a restive and
nightmarish sleep to a grateful impression of sunlight on window panes
which had been gray and dripping. Then he realized that it was not,
after all, only the sun, but that there was a presence in his room.

There sitting at his bedside, with eyes not austere but smiling and
sympathy-brimming, was Anne, and when he sought to question her she laid
a smooth hand on his lips and admonished: "Don't ask any questions now,
Daddy. There's lots and lots of time for that. I've come to stay with
you until you are well."

There would be some lonely weeks for the girl coming fresh from town,
but they would not trouble her until the time arrived when Boone would
have to go to Frankfort for the opening of the legislature, and there
were ten days yet before that. Now he rode over every evening, and
their voices and laughter drifted into the sick room where Larry Masters
lay.

Anne had no suspicion that every night Victor McCalloway sat up waiting
for Boone's return, for the most part forgetfu