y have let their souls stand naked in their eyes.
Almost at the same instant each man sought his pipe, filling it with
restless fingers.

"My boy," said the man whose name had been Marshall Sothern through so
many weary years that it was now more his name than any other, "there
is the tale to tell . . . sometime. I can't do it now. One of these
days . . . this has been the only dream I've dreamed since I saw you
last, in Manhattan, David . . . you and I are going to pack off into
the mountains. We're going alone, David, and we're going far; so far
that the smoke of our little camp fire will be for our eyes and
nostrils alone. Then I can tell you my story. And . . . David . . ."

"Yes, Dad?"

"That forty thousand . . . You are a gentleman, David! That was like
you. I . . . I thank you, my boy!"

Drennen's face, through a rush of emotions, reddened. Reddened for an
unreasoning, inexplicable shame no less than for a proud sort of joy
that at last he had been able to do some small thing for John Harper
Drennen, his old hero.

Again there fell a silence, a little awkward. The two men, with so
much to say to each other, found a thousand thoughts stopping the rush
of words to be spoken. Drennen realised what his father had had in
mind, or rather in that keenly sensitive, intuitive thing which is not
mind but soul, when he had spoken of the two of them taking together a
trail which must lead them for many days into the solitudes before they
could talk to each other of the matters which counted. Something not
quite shyness but akin to it was upon them both; it was a relief when
the telephone of Sothern's desk rang.

It was Marc Lemarc asking for Drennen. He had hired men, bought tools
and dynamite, ordered machinery from the nearest city where machinery
was to be had, had spoken to a competent engineer about taking charge
of the work to be done. He was quite ready to return to MacLeod's
Settlement.

"It's all right, Lemarc," answered Drennen. "I have deposited the
money in your name in the Lebarge Bank. You can draw out whatever you
please and when you please. No, you needn't wait for me; I'll overtake
you, I have no doubt. Oh, that's all right!"

Before Drennen had finished there came the second interruption. The
clerk came to announce the arrival of Israel Weyeth, who, upon
Sothern's promotion, was to fill the vacant position of Local Manager.

"Mr. Sothern," said Drennen while the clerk was still