is, I must ride away
alone."

"I'd be afraid of the future without you; it would be so bleak and
lonesome," said he simply. He gave her good night before her tent.

"And for that reason," said he, carrying on his thought of a minute
before, "we must weather the crisis like good sailormen."

CHAPTER XXI

THE CRISIS

Brave words are one thing, and inflammation in a gunshot wound is
another. Infection set up in Jerry Boyle's hurt on the day after that
which the doctor had marked as the critical point in his battle for
life.

Dr. Slavens was of the opinion that the bullet had carried a piece of
clothing into the wound, which it was not able to discharge of itself.
An operation for its removal was the one hope of saving the patient, and
that measure for relief was attended by so many perils as to make it
very desperate indeed.

The doctor viewed this alarming turn in his patient with deep concern,
not so much out of sympathy for the sufferer and his parents, perhaps,
as on his personal account. The welfare of Jerry Boyle had become the
most important thing in life to him, for his own future hinged on that
as its most vital bearing.

Agnes was firm in her adherence to the plan of procedure which she had
announced. She declared that, as matters stood, she would not become a
burden, with all her encumbrances, upon his slender resources. If
mischance wrested the promised fee out of his hands, then they must go
their ways separately. She repeated her determination to abide by that
on the morning when Dr. Slavens announced the necessity of the
operation.

Slavens was hurt and disappointed. It seemed that his faith in her
suffered a blighting frost.

"In plain words," he charged, "you will refuse to marry me because I am
poor."

"There's no other way to put it," she admitted. "But I refuse only out
of my boundless esteem and tenderness for you and your success. I am
putting down happiness when I do this, and taking up an additional load
of pain. But what peace or self-respect would ever be mine again if I
should consent to add the burden of two helpless old people to what you
will have to carry on your own account?"

"My back is broad enough to be Atlas to your little world," he
declared.

"But there's no use strangling success," she argued. "It can't be many
years, at the longest, until time and nature relieve my tottering
charges of their dependence on me. If you would care to wait, and if I
might not