make the best stuff we can out of them. She's not likely to be one of those hysterical nuisances who are always in the doctor's hands, anyway."
"Not much! Hoe her own row all right, won't yer, girlie? Sure, sir. I'll attend about them messages right away."
Tempest rode on into Grey Wolf with his eyes softened. Randal's life was cruelly circumscribed; terribly lonely. But he had found the compensation. Was Tempest so much a lesser man than Randal that he could not also find the compensation?
Early in the next month came the last night at Grey Wolf, and Tempest walked for long under the cottonwoods, seeing the lights which he would not know any more blink out along the dimming street. For it was not likely that he would ever come back to Grey Wolf, and it was not likely that after to-morrow he would ever again see Grange's Andree. The whole of him was shrinking from the future which would possibly be Andree's. He seldom spoke to her now, and he seldom spoke to Dick. He could ask no questions there. He could only fear. He could only hate with a bitter helplessness the man whom Andree loved. And he could do nothing more. He with his hands tied, and the great silent North waiting to swallow him.
For long he walked under the cotton-woods, and then, sharply, leaping through his brain came the thought:
"She was a good woman—and young enough to understand. Perhaps she would look after Andree."
He wheeled; went swiftly into his office, and wrote one of his direct, clearly-put letters to Jennifer.
Dick also wrote to Jennifer that evening. He had meant to go without it, but in his packing he had come on the little millboard painting of her which he had always carried until shame made him put it away. In the little bunk-room he stood still, staring down on the bright face in the candlelight, and his eyes were grim. For the difference between the centre of effort and the centre of lateral direction was too great in Dick. He needed a hand on the tiller, and Fate had denied him the only two
