game! Peter Rockett, with his
eyes bulging from his head, watched his grave employer cut and deal and
gather in the stakes, with as much astonishment as if that dignified
gentleman had walked head downward on the ceiling. Yet John Corbett
proceeded with the game, as grave and solemn as when he asked a
blessing at the table. Sometimes he hummed snatches of Army tunes, and
sometimes Rance Belmont swore softly, and to the anxious ear which
listened at the stovepipe-hole above, both sounds were of surpassing
sweetness!

CHAPTER XI.

_THE BLIZZARD_.

When the door closed behind Rance Belmont and Evelyn, Fred sank into a
chair with the whole room whirling dizzily around him. Why had the
world gone so suddenly wrong?

His head was quite clear now, and only the throbbing hurt on the back
of his head reminded him of Reginald's cowardly blow. But his anger
against his brothers had faded into apathy in the presence of this new
trouble which seemed to choke the very fountains of his being.

One terrible fact smote him with crushing force--Evelyn had left him
and gone with Rance Belmont. She said she hoped she would never see him
again--that she was done with him--and her eyes had blazed with anger
and hatred--and she had stepped in between him and the miserable
villain whom he would have so dearly loved to have beaten the life out
of.

He tried to rage against her, but instead he could think of nothing but
her sweet imperiousness, her dazzling beauty, her cheerfulness under
all circumstances, and her loyalty to him.

She had given up everything for him--for his sake she had defied her
father, renounced all share in his great wealth, suffered the hardships
and loneliness of the prairie, all for him.

Her workbag lay on the table, partly open. It seemed to call and beckon
to him. He took it tenderly in his hands, and from its folds there fell
a crumpled sheet of paper. He smoothed it out, and found it partly
written on in Evelyn's clear round hand.

He held it to the light eagerly, as one might read a message from the
dead. Who was Evelyn writing to?

"_ When you ask me to leave my husband you ask me to do a dishonorable
and cowardly thing. Fred has never_"--the writing ceased abruptly. Fred
read it again aloud, then sprang to his feet with a smothered
exclamation. Only one solution presented itself to his mind. She had
been writing to Rance Belmont trying to withstand his advances, trying
to break away from his