Jerry Boyle. It
seemed to her that those words gave her a dignity and a standing before
the world which all the shadows of her troubled life could not dim.

But there were the shadows, there were the ghosts. She felt that it
would be exceedingly burdensome to him to assume the future of two aged
people, besides that of her own. Marrying her would be marrying a
family, indeed, for she had wasted on that desert hope much of the small
bit of money which the scraping and cleaning of their once great
properties had yielded. And there lay the scheme prostrate, winded, a
poor runner in a rugged race.

Of course, she might come clear of the tangle by permitting Dr. Slavens
to surrender his homestead to Boyle; she might do that, and impoverish
him, and accept that sacrifice as the price of herself. For after the
doctor had given up his claim she could marry him and ride off
complacently by his side, as heartless and soulless as anything which is
bought and sold.

That's all it would amount to--a downright sale, even though she did not
marry the doctor. She would be accepting immunity at the shameful price
of a man's biggest chance in all his days. It was too much. She couldn't
do it; she never intended to do it; she couldn't bring it around so that
it would present an honorable aspect from any angle.

Evening came over the hills with a chill, which it gave to the
cottonwoods as it passed them on the river-bank. Their leaves trembled
and sighed, and some were so frightened by the foreboding of winter in
that touch that they lost their hold upon the boughs and came circling
down. In the tall grass which thrived rankly in that sub-irrigated spot
the insects of summer were out of voice. The choristers of the brushwood
seemed to be in difficulties over the beginning, also. They set out in
shivering starts, and left off with jerky suddenness, as if they had no
heart for singing against this unmistakable warning that their summer
concert season had come to its end.

Agnes fired up her stove and sat by it, watching the eager sparks make
their brave plunge into the vast night which so soon extinguished them,
as the world engulfs and silences streams and clouds of little men who
rush into it with a roar. So many of them there are who go forth so day
by day, who avail, with all their fuss and noise, no more against it
than the breath of an infant against a stone.

Sitting there with the night drawing in around her, she felt the cold