he axe, when the
man who had instructed Miss Waynefleet how to nurse him came up the
trail. Gordon sat down on a log close by, and looked at Nasmyth.

"I was coming round to make sure I was quite through with your case,
but it's tolerably evident you have no more use for me," he said.
"Stopping here?"

Nasmyth said he was, and Gordon nodded.

"Well," he said, "in several ways I'm rather glad. It's going to make
things easier for Miss Waynefleet. Guess you understand what I meant
when I said she ran the ranch?"

Nasmyth said he thought he did, and then, with a certain diffidence,
he changed the subject.

"You must have spent a good deal of time looking after
men--professionally," he said.

Gordon laughed in a somewhat curious fashion. "We'll let that go. In
one sense, I've dropped my profession. I had to, and it's scarcely
likely that I shall take it up again."

"I wonder," said Nasmyth reflectively, "if it's admissible for me to
mention that I had fancied something of the kind. You see, in the
Bush, I have naturally come across a good many men who have turned
their backs upon the cities."

Gordon made a little gesture. "It's a sure thing you'll hear a good
deal about me at the settlement, where, though the boys don't cast it
up to me, I'm credited with having killed somebody back East, and as
I've had an idea that I could hit it rather well with you, I'd sooner
tell you the thing myself. Well, I was making my mark in a big city,
several years ago, when I lost my head. When success comes too
quickly, it's a thing you're rather apt to do. The trouble is that you
have usually to face the results of it."

He broke off for a moment with a little wry smile. "In my case they
were serious. There was a woman of hysterical temperament with a
diseased imagination. I was overworked and a trifle overwrought, and
had a glass of brandy too much at a certain committee lunch. Then
there was a rather delicate operation in a hospital, and though I'm
not sure yet that I blundered, it was suggested that I did, and the
thing was complicated by what the woman said when the committee took
it up. It didn't matter that the patient recovered, for when he took
action against the woman, the thing made a sensation in the Eastern
papers."

He looked at Nasmyth with a question in his eyes.

"Now," he said, "you more or less understand my reasons for ranching
here. How's it going to affect you?"

Nasmyth gazed reflectively towards the