look as sore as saddle boils."

Drennen slept much but restlessly. When he was awake he stared with
clouded, troubled eyes at the smoke-blackened ceiling or out of the
door at the willows or into Sothern's rugged face. His fever raged
high, his body burning with it, his brain a turbulent melting pot
wherein strange fancies passed through odd, vaporous forms. He
confused events of a far-off childhood with occurrences of yesterday.
He was a little boy, gone black-berrying, and Ygerne Bellaire went with
him. His dugout was a cabin in the Yukon where he had lived a year, or
it was a speeding train carrying him away from an old home and into the
wilderness. There were times when Marshall Sothern, bending over him,
was an enemy, torturing him. Times when the old man was his own father
and Drennen put out his hands to him, his face alight. Times when the
sick man cursed and reviled him. Times when he broke into shouting
song or laughter or raved of his gold. But most often did he speak the
name Ygerne; now tenderly, now sneeringly, now with a love that
yearned, now a hatred which shook him terribly and left him exhausted.

The doctor had gotten back to Lebarge before Marshall Sothern sent for
Ygerne. She came without delay.

"This man is very sick," he told her, bending a searching look at her
from under brows shaggy in thought. "He talks of you very much. Does
he love you or does he hate you?"

She looked at him coolly, her gaze defying him to pry into matters
which did not concern him. He understood the look and said calmly:

"I want him to get well. There are reasons why he has got to get well."

"I know," she laughed at him. "Good, golden reasons!"

"If he loves you, as I have a mind he does," Sothern went on quietly,
"I think that you could do more to help him than any one else. If he
hates you you might do more harm than good. That is why I asked."

"He is delirious?"

"A great deal of the time; not always."

Her brows puckered thoughtfully.

"I think," she said at last, "that he loves me and hates me . . . both!
But I'll come in and see if I can be of any help. I, too, have good
reasons for wanting him to live."

So the door to Drennen's dugout was opened to Ygerne Bellaire. But to
no one else in the Settlement; Marshall Sothern saw to that. Madden
came, Hasbrook came; but they did not get their feet across the rude
threshold. They grumbled, Madden in particular. They accused Sothern