s of tea.
Fanny's lips were cracked, and the skin was peeled from her nose, and
her hair was straggling and her eyes red-rimmed. She drank the tea in
great gulps. And then she went into the tiny bunkroom, and tumbled into
one of the shelf-bunks, and slept.

When she awoke she sat up in terror, and bumped her head against the
bunk above, and called, "Clancy!"

"Yep!" from the next room. He came to the door. The acrid smell of their
pipes was incense in her nostrils. "Rested?"

"What time is it?"

"Seven o'clock. Dinner time. Ham and eggs."

She got up stiffly, and bathed her roughened face, and produced a powder
pad (they carry them in the face of danger, death, and dissolution) and
dusted it over her scaly nose. She did her hair--her vigorous, abundant
hair that shone in the lamplight, pulled down her blouse, surveyed
her torn shoes ruefully, donned the khaki skirt that Albert Edward had
magically produced from somewhere to take the place of her breeches.
She dusted her shoes with a bit of rag, regarded herself steadily in the
wavering mirror, and went in.

The two men were talking quietly. Albert Edward was moving deftly from
stove to table. They both looked up as she came in, and she looked at
Heyl. Their eyes held.

Albert Edward was as sporting a gentleman as the late dear king whose
name he bore. He went out to tend Heyl's horse, he said. It was little
he knew of horses, and he rather feared them, as does a sailing man. But
he went, nevertheless.

Heyl still looked at Fanny, and Fanny at him.

"It's absurd," said Fanny. "It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen."

"It's simple enough, really," he answered. "I saw Ella Monahan in
Chicago, and she told me all she knew, and something of what she had
guessed. I waited a few days and came back. I had to." He smiled. "A
pretty job you've made of trying to be selfish."

At that she smiled, too, pitifully enough, for her lower lip trembled.
She caught it between her teeth in a last sharp effort at self-control.
"Don't!" she quavered. And then, in a panic, her two hands came up in a
vain effort to hide the tears. She sank down on the rough bench by the
table, and the proud head came down on her arms so that there was a
little clatter and tinkle among the supper things spread on the table.
Then quiet.

Clarence Heyl stared. He stared, helplessly, as does a man who has
never, in all his life, been called upon to comfort a woman in tears.
Then instinct came t