re.

"He treats his wife a lot better too."

"There was room for it," he said dryly.

"She's a nice little thing."

"Yes."

Conversation, which had been momentarily brisk, threatened to die out
for lack of fuel. Anything was better than significant silences in
which she could almost hear the hammering of her heart.

"Win Beresford told me about the offer you had to go into the
Mounted," she said, plunging.

"Yes?"

"Will you accept?"

He looked at her, surprised. "Didn't Win tell you? I said right away I
couldn't accept. He knew that."

"Oh! I don't believe he did tell me. Perhaps you hadn't decided
then." Privately she was determining to settle some day with Winthrop
Beresford for leading her into this. He had purposely kept silent, she
knew now, in the hope that she would talk to Tom Morse about it. "But
I'm glad you've decided against going in."

"Why?"

"It's dangerous, and I don't think it has much future."

"Win likes it."

"Yes, Win does. He'll get a commission one of these days."

"He deserves one. I--I hope you'll both be very happy."

He was walking beside her. Quickly her glance flashed up at him. Was
that the reason he had held himself so aloof from her?

"I think we shall, very likely, if you mean Win and I. He's always
happy, isn't he? And I try to be. I'm sorry he's leaving this part of
the country. Writing-on-Stone is a long way from here. He may never
get back. I'll miss him a good deal. Of course you will too."

This was plain enough, but Tom could not accept it at face value.
Perhaps she meant that she would miss him until Win got ready to send
for her. An idea lodged firmly in the mind cannot be ejected at an
instant's notice.

"Yes, I'll miss him. He's a splendid fellow. I've never met one like
him, so staunch and cheerful and game. Sometime I'd like to tell you
about that trip we took. You'd be proud of him."

"I'm sure all his friends are," she said, smiling a queer little smile
that was lost in the darkness.

"He was a very sick man, in a great deal of pain, and we had a rather
dreadful time of it. Of course it hit him far harder than it did
either West or me. But never a whimper out of him from first to last.
Always cheerful, always hopeful, with a little joke or a snatch of a
song, even when it looked as though we couldn't go on another day.
He's one out of ten thousand."

"I heard him say that about another man--only I think he said one in
fifty thousand," she ma