y. "We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it's ours now;
and Jerry Lumley's stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he's better off than
Abner, or Abner's wife."

Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some
latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her
face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not
against her.

"I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was at
Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a
laugh.

"How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man,
furtively.

"Oh, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered, brusquely,
and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.

* * * * *

In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the
windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays,
glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the
cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for
the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the vision of
the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth and
refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to rest upon the
wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South over the hills,
and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen into
winter-quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite beauty
of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the hills,
the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw a world
in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone bright on
the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of Abner's
wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were stricken
or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains of the
mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their own.
Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not happened
to her, too, in those eight years!

With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left
Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the
West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking up
her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not as it
was befor