articularly tactful, since, without intending it, he made
it evident that he felt his comrade had been to some extent remiss; but
Agatha smiled.

"Oh," she replied, "I understand! You needn't labor with excuses. But
doesn't the same thing apply to you?"

"It certainly did. Now, however, things have become a little easier. My
holding is larger than Gregory's, and I have a foreman who can look
after it for me."

"Gregory said that you were a great friend of his."

Wyllard seized this opportunity. "He was a great friend of mine and I
like to think it means the same thing. In fact it's reasonably certain
that he saved my life for me."

"Ah!" exclaimed Agatha; "that is a thing he didn't mention. How did it
come about?"

Wyllard was glad to tell the story. He was anxious to say all he
honestly could in Hawtrey's favor.

"We were at work on a railroad trestle--a towering wooden bridge, in
British Columbia. It stretched across a deep ravine with great boulders
and there was a stream in the bottom of it. He stood high up on a
staging close beneath the rails. A fast freight, a huge general produce
train came down the track, with one of the new big locomotives hauling
it, and when the cars went banging by above us we could hardly hold on
to the bridge. The construction foreman was a hustler, and we had to get
the spikes in. I was swinging the hammer when I felt the plank beneath
me slip. The train, it seems, had jarred loose the bolt around which we
had our lashings. For a moment I felt that I was going down into the
gorge, and then Gregory leaned out and grabbed me. He had only one free
hand to do it with, and when he felt my weight one foot swung out from
the stringer he had sprung to. It seemed certain that I would pull him
with me, too. We hung like that for a space--I don't quite know how
long."

He paused for a moment, apparently feeling the stress of it again, and
there was a faint thrill in his voice when he went on.

"It was then," he said, "I knew just what kind of man Gregory Hawtrey
was. Anybody else would have let me go; but he held on. I got my hand on
some of the framing, and he swung me on to the stringer."

He saw the gleam in Agatha's eyes. "Oh!" she cried, "that is just what
he must have done. He was like that always--impulsive, splendidly
generous."

Wyllard felt that he had succeeded, though he knew that there were men
on the prairie who called his comrade slackly careless, instead of
impulsive.