. I've done such a mass of private thinking about you
in the last ten years that I'm likely to forget I've scarcely seen you
in that time. Just remember, will you, that like the girl in the sob
song, `You made me what I am to-day?'"

"I! You're being humorous again."

"Never less so in my life. Listen, Fan. That cowardly, sickly little boy
you fought for in the street, that day in Winnebago, showed every sign
of growing up a cowardly, sickly man. You're the real reason for his
not doing so. Now, wait a minute. I was an impressionable little kid,
I guess. Sickly ones are apt to be. I worshiped you and hated you from
that day. Worshiped you for the blazing, generous, whole-souled little
devil of a spitfire that you were. Hated you because--well, what boy
wouldn't hate a girl who had to fight for him. Gosh! It makes me sick to
think of it, even now. Pasty-faced rat!"

"What nonsense! I'd forgotten all about it."

"No you hadn't. Tell me, what flashed into your mind when you saw me in
Temple that night before you left Winnebago? The truth, now."

She learned, later, that people did not lie to him. She tried it now,
and found herself saying, rather shamefacedly, "I thought `Why, it's
Clarence Heyl, the Cowardy-Cat!'"

"There! That's why I'm here to-day. I knew you were thinking that. I
knew it all the time I was in Colorado, growing up from a sickly kid,
with a bum lung, to a heap big strong man. It forced me to do things I
was afraid to do. It goaded me on to stunts at the very thought of which
I'd break out in a clammy sweat. Don't you see how I'll have to turn
handsprings in front of you, like the school-boy in the McCutcheon
cartoon? Don't you see how I'll have to flex my muscles--like this--to
show you how strong I am? I may even have to beat you, eventually. Why,
child, I've chummed with lions, and bears, and wolves, and everything,
because of you, you little devil in the red cap! I've climbed
unclimbable mountains. I've frozen my feet in blizzards. I've wandered
for days on a mountain top, lost, living on dried currants and milk
chocolate,--and Lord! how I hate milk chocolate! I've dodged snowslides,
and slept in trees; I've endured cold, and hunger and thirst, through
you. It took me years to get used to the idea of passing a timber wolf
without looking around, but I learned to do it--because of you. You made
me. They sent me to Colorado, a lonely kid, with a pretty fair chance
of dying, and I would have, if it