e minutes ago. Now I'll do
anything to get back to strength and work."

"You don't seem very joyous, however," the doctor responded.

"Joy don't belong to me. We parted company some years ago. But life is
mine."

"And duty?"

"Yes, and duty. Say, Doctor, if you'd ever cared all there was in you to
care for one woman, and then had to give her up, you'd know how I feel.
And if, then, a sort of service opened up before you, you'd know how I
welcome this."

Jim's face, white from his illness, was wonderfully handsome now, and he
looked at his friend with that eager longing for sympathy men of his mould
need deeply. Horace Carey stood up beside the bed and, looking down with a
face where intense feeling and self-control were manifest, said in a low
voice:

"I have cared. I have had to give up, and I know what service means."

CHAPTER VI

WHEN THE GRASSHOPPER WAS A BURDEN

Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither
shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive shall
fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock
shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no
herd in the stalls:

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
--HABAKKUK.

While Jim Shirley was getting back to health, he and his physician had
many long talks regarding the West and its future; its products and its
people. There was only one topic in which Horace Carey was but
intermittently interested, namely, Jim's neighbors--the Aydelots. At
least, it seemed so to Jim, who had loved Asher from boyhood, and had
taken Virginia on sight and paid homage to her for all the years that
followed. Jim accepted the doctor's manner at first as a mere personal
trait, but, having nothing to do except to lie and think, he grew
curiously annoyed over it.

"I wish you'd tell me what ails you?" he blurted out one evening, as the
two sat together in the twilight.

"About what?" the doctor inquired. "If I knew, I might even risk my own
medicine to get over it."

"Don't joke, Horace Carey, not with a frail invalid. I've tried all day to
talk to you about my neighbors and you turn the subject away as if it was
of no consequence, and now, tonight, you settle down and say, 'Tell me
about the Aydelots.' Why do you want to hear in the dark what you won't
listen to in the daylight?"

"Oh, you are a sick man, Jim, or you wouldn't be so silly," the doctor
r