s to take a delight in impressing
her with a burden so unwholesome as to come very nearly undoing all
the good it has endowed her with. It seems queer. It seems devilish
hard. But I generally notice the harder folk try in this world the
heavier the cross they have to carry. Maybe it's the law of fitness.
Maybe folks must bear a burden at their full capacity so that the
result may be a greater refining. I've thought a lot lately. Sometimes
I've thought it's better to sit around and--well, don't worry with
anything outside three meals a day. That's been in weak moments. You
see, we can't help our natures. If it's in us to do the best we
know--well, we're just going to do it, and--and hang the result."

"H'm." Buck grunted and waited.

"I was thinking of things around here," the other went on. "I was
wondering about the camp. It's a stinking hole now. It's full of
everything--rotten. Yet they think it's one huge success, and they
reckon we helped them to it."

"How?"

"Why, by feeding them when they were starving, and so making it
possible for them to hang on until Nature opened her treasure-house."

Buck nodded.

"I see."

"All I see is--perhaps through our efforts--we've turned loose a hell
of drunkenness and debauchery upon earth. These people--perhaps
through our efforts--have been driven along the very path we would
rather have saved them from. The majority will end in disaster. Some
have already done so. But for our help this would not have been."

"They'd jest have starved."

"We should not have sold our farm, and Ike and Pete would have been
alive now."

"In Ike's case it would have been a pity."

The Padre smiled. He took Buck's protest for what it was worth.

"Yes, life's pretty twisted. It's always been the same with me.
Wherever I've got busy trying to help those I had regard for I
generally managed to find my efforts working out with a result I never
reckoned on. That's why I am here."

The Padre smoked on for some moments in silence.

"I was hot-headed once," he went on presently. "I was so hot-headed
that I--I insulted the woman I loved. I insulted her beyond
forgiveness. You see, she didn't love me. She loved my greatest
friend. Still, that's another story. It's the friend I want to talk
about. He was a splendid fellow. A bright, impetuous gambler on the
New York Stock Exchange. We were both on Wall Street. I was a gambler
too. I was a lucky gambler, and he was an unlucky one. In spite of