more than you could have expected."

"Ah!" rejoined Gordon, with a look of anxiety, "you probably got hold
of Mattawa. Well, after all, I guess he has done the wise thing." Then
after a pause he observed, "There is very little the matter with your
courage."

"I fancy," observed Laura half wistfully, "that is, in several
respects, fortunate."

Then she went on again, and though Gordon felt exceedingly compassionate,
he frowned and closed one hand.

"It's a sure thing I'll have to tell Waynefleet what kind of a man he
is," he said.

CHAPTER IX

GORDON SPEAKS HIS MIND

It was a nipping morning, and the clearing outside the ranch was
flecked with patches of frozen snow, when Waynefleet sat shivering in
a hide chair beside the stove. The broken viands upon the table in
front of him suggested that he had just made a tolerable breakfast,
but his pose was expressive of limp resignation, and one could have
fancied from the look in his thin face that he was feeling very sorry
for himself. Self-pity, in fact, was rather a habit of his, and,
perhaps, because of it, he had usually very little pity to spare for
anybody else. He looked up when, flushed and gasping, his daughter
came in with two heavy pails of water. She shivered visibly.

"It would be a favour if you would shut that door as soon as you can,"
said Waynefleet. "As I fancy I have mentioned, this cold goes right
through me. It occurred to me that you might have come in a little
earlier to see if I was getting my breakfast properly."

Laura, who glanced at the table, thought that he had acquitted himself
reasonably well, but she refrained from pointing out the fact, and,
after shutting the door, crossed the room to her store-cupboard, and
took out a can of fruit which she had set aside for another purpose.
Waynefleet watched her open it and made a little sign of impatience.

"You are very clumsy this morning," he said.

The girl's hands were wet and stiff with cold, but she quietly laid
another plate upon the table before she answered him.

"Charly is busy in the slashing, and I don't want to take him away,
but there are those logs in the wet patch that ought to be hauled out
now the ground is hard," she said. "I suppose you don't feel equal to
doing it to-day?"

"No," said Waynefleet with querulous incisiveness, "it is quite out of
the question. Do I look like a man who could reasonably be expected to
undertake anything of that kind just now?"