.... She found a place where I
could stay. They were decent people, but hard....

"The weather was bitterly cold. She was taken sick. When the people
with whom I was staying heard what she had done, they refused to help.
I begged in the street. I was very small and thin. The--the beasts did
not trouble me. Then, when Mary was very sick, I met Daddy. I begged
from him. He did not give me a nickel and pass on. He stopped and made
me talk--he made me take him to Mary.

"He had her moved to the best hospital.... It was too late.... I also
had pneumonia. They said I would die. But Daddy brought me home just
as soon as I could be moved. The railroad was then a hundred miles
from Dry Mesa. But he kept me wrapped in furs, and all the way he
carried me in his arms. Do you wonder why I love him so?... That is
all. You see now why I shrank from telling--why I denied Mary."

"She is in Heaven," said Ashton--"in Heaven, where some day you will
go. But I--I--" She could see no more than the vague blotch of his
white face in the darkness, but his voice told her the anguish of his
look. "He was right--your brother. He told me that we always take with
us the heaven or the hell that we each have made for ourselves.... I
have lost you.... You know now why I am going down to do the little
that I can do."

"You are going down?" she asked wonderingly. "You still say that you
are going down? Yet I have told you about--Mary!"

"If you were she, I still would be utterly unfit to look you in the
face. I shall go to the camp for the lantern. There were other gloves
and some of my clothing."

"They are all here."

"Show me where they are, and get ready the lantern and bandages and a
sack of food."

"You are going down," she acquiesced. "You are going to Tom. And you
are coming up with him--to me!"

"That is too much. I doubted you. Where are those things? He is
waiting down there alone."

"Here is his child, my nephew," she said. "Hold him while I go for
what you need. Here is my pistol. The man who shot you, who twice
tried to murder you--he is somewhere up here. He will not harm me. But
you--If he comes creeping in on you here, shoot him as you would shoot
a coyote."

"The man who shot me? He is up here?"

"You have seen him every day since that first day I met you," replied
the girl. "His name is Gowan."

"_Gowan?_"

"Kid Gowan, murderer! I saw his eyes as he looked at you, lying down
there on the brink. Then I knew."

"Bu