ur or two."

"Then take this chair and be comfortable."

Meade swung his big reading-chair out beneath the hanging-lamp, and,
going to the sideboard, brought back a bottle, some glasses, and a
pouch of tobacco. Noting the old man's sigh of fatigue as he sat
himself down heavily, he remarked, sympathetically:

"Mr. Gale, you've made a long trip to-day, and you must be tired. If
this talk is to be as lengthy as you say, why not have a drink with me
now, and postpone it until to-morrow?"

"I've been tired for eighteen years," the other replied; "to-night I
hope to get rested." He lapsed into silence, watching his host pour out
two glasses of liquor, fill his pipe, and then stretch himself out
contentedly, his feet resting on another chair--a picture of youthful
strength, vitality, and determination. Beneath the Lieutenant's flannel
shirt the long, slim muscles showed free and full, and the firm set of
jaw and lip denoted a mind at rest and confident of itself. Gale found
himself for a moment jealously regarding the youth and his enviable
state of contentment and decision.

"Well, let's get at it," the younger man finally said.

"I suppose you'll want to interrupt and question me a heap, but I'll
ask you to let me tell this story the way it comes to me, till I get it
out, then we can go back and take up the queer stuff. It runs back
eighteen or twenty years, and, being as it's part of a hidden life, it
isn't easy to tell. You'll be the first one to hear it, and I reckon
you're enough like other men to disbelieve--you're not old enough, and
you haven't knocked around enough to learn that nothing is impossible,
that nothing is strange enough to be unreasonable. Likewise, you'll
want to know what, all this has to do with you and Necia--yes, she told
me about you and her, and that's why I'm here." He paused. "You really
think you love her, do you?"

Burrell removed his pipe and gazed at its coal impersonally.

"I love her so well, Mr. Gale, that nothing you can say will affect me.
I--I hesitated at first about asking her to be my wife, because--you'll
appreciate the unusual--well, her unusual history. You see, I come from
a country where mixed blood is about the only thing that can't be lived
down or overlooked, and I've been raised with notions of family honor
and pride of race and birth, and so forth, that might seem preposterous
and absurd to you. But a heap of conceits like that have been bred into
me from generati