where I have made harsh judgings of my fellows. There are more excuses
for ill-doings to my old eyes. Was't so with you?"

"Yes," said Pete. "We're not such a poor lot after all--not when we stop
to think or when we're forced to see. In fire or flood, or sickness,
we're all eager to bear a hand--for we see, then. Our purses and our
hearts are open to any great disaster. Why, take two cases--the telephone
girls and the elevator boys. Don't sound heroic much, do they? But, by
God, when the floods come, the telephone girls die at their desks, still
sendin' out warnings! And when a big fire comes, and there are lives to
save, them triflin' cigarette-smoking, sassy, no-account boys run the
elevators through hell and back as long as the cables hold! Every time!"

The old man's eye kindled. "Look ye there, now! Man, and have ye noticed
that too?" he cried triumphantly. "Ye have e'en the secret of it. We're
good in emairgencies, the now; when the time comes when we get a glimmer
that all life is emairgency and tremblin' peril, that every turn may be
the wrong turn--when we can see that our petty system of suns and all is
nobbut a wee darkling cockle-boat, driftin' and tossed abune the waves in
the outmost seas of an onrushing universe--hap-chance we'll no loom so
grandlike in our own een; and we'll tak' hands for comfort in the dark.
'Tis good theology, yon wise saying of the silly street: 'We are all in
the same boat. Don't rock the boat!'"

* * * * *

When Peter had gone, McClintock's feeble hands, on the wheel-rims, pushed
his chair to the wall and took from a locked cabinet an old and faded
daguerreotype of a woman with smiling eyes. He looked at it long and
silently, and fell asleep there, the time-stained locket in his hands.
When Van Lear returned, McClintock woke barely in time to hide the
locket under a cunning hand--and spoke harshly to that aged servitor.

CHAPTER XVI

Before the two adventurers left Vesper, Johnson wired to Jose Benavides
the date of his arrival at Tucson; and from El Paso he wired Jackson Carr
to leave Mohawk the next day but one, with the last load of water.
Johnson and Boland arrived in Tucson at seven-twenty-six in the morning.
Benavides met them at the station--a slender, wiry, hawk-faced man, with
a grizzled beard.

"So this is Francis Charles?" said Stanley.

"Frank by brevet, now. Pete has promoted me. He says that Francis Charles
is too heavy f