ard it in Mern's office in New York," he
said, with poor tact.

She offered them and he took the garments, clutching the cap and holding
the jacket across his arm.

"I don't blame you for looking at me as you do," she went on, demurely
and deprecatingly feminine at that moment. She smoothed her blouse with
both hands and glanced down at her stained and ragged skirt. "It's my
only warm dress and I've lived and slept in it--and I haven't minded a
bit when the coffee slopped. I was trying to do my best."

He rocked his head voicelessly, helplessly--striving to fit speech to
the thoughts that surged in him.

Then she made a request which perturbed him still more: "You came up
here on horseback, I think you said. May I borrow the horse?"

"Do you mean that you're going away?" he gulped.

She spread her hands and again glanced down at her attire. She was
hiding deeper motives behind the thin screen of concern for her
wardrobe, trying to make a jest of the situation, and not succeeding.
"You must own up that I need to go shopping."

He turned from her to the chasm where the logs were tumbling along.

"And there's nothing to keep me here any longer, Mr. Latisan, now that
you have come back!"

He faced her again, swinging with a haste that ground his heels sharply
on the ledge. But she put up her hand when he opened his mouth.

"Do you think it will do us any good to bring up what has happened? I
don't. I implore you not to mention it. You have come back to your
work--it's waiting for you. After what you have done to-day you'll never
need to lower your eyes before any man on this river. In my heart, when
I gave you your cap and jacket, I was asking you to take back your work.
I ask you with all the earnestness that's in me! Won't you do it?" There
was a hint of a sob in her tones, but her eyes were full of the
confidence of one who felt that she was not asking vainly.

He did not hesitate. But words were still beyond the reach of his
tongue. He dragged off the billycock hat which he had bought in town and
scaled it far out into the turbid flood. He pulled off the wrinkled coat
of the ready-made suit and tossed it down the side of the cliff. With
the cap on his head and buckling the belt of the jacket he stood before
her. "The men gave me my chance to-day; you're giving me a bigger one."

"Then I'm only wasting your time--up here!"

It had not been in Latisan's mind that he would make any reference to
the past; she