to the world. I think my brother will be back from his
cattle-driving trip to-morrow, and I mean to bring him to see your
pictures very soon. Perhaps he will suggest something for you."

"This moonlight does such wonderful things to your face," he remarked.

"Good night! I'm sorry you have so far to go."

"It isn't far enough," he answered, still searching her face. "Not half
far enough--I have so much thinking--so much thinking to do."

CHAPTER V

INTO THE PAST AND OUT

It was not without concern that Mrs. Laithe awaited the return of her
brother the following day. The cattle drive that had beguiled him from
habits of extreme and enforced precision had occupied a fortnight, and
she understood the life to be sorely trying to any but the rugged.
Earnestly had she sought to dissuade him from the adventure, for
insomnia had long beset him, and dyspepsia marked him for its plaything.
Eloquently exposed to him had been the folly of hoping for sleep on
stony ground after vainly wooing it in the softest of beds with an air
pillow inflated to the nice degree of resiliency. And the unsuitability
of camp fare to a man who had long been sustained by an invalid's diet
had been shrewdly set forth. None the less he had persisted, caught in
the frenzy of desperation that sometimes overwhelms even the practiced
dyspeptic.

"It can't be worse, Sis," he had tragically assured her at parting. "If
I've got to writhe out my days, why, I shall writhe like a gentleman,
that's all. I can at least chuck those baby foods and perish with some
dignity."

"But you're not leaving your medicines, those drops and things?" she had
asked, in real alarm.

"Every infernal drop. I've struck all along the line--not another morsel
of disinfected zwieback nor sanitary breakfast food nor hygienic prunes
nor glutenized near-food--not even one pepsin tablet. It's come to where
I'd sooner have no stomach at all than be bullied night and day by one."

With which splendid defiance he had ridden desperately off, a steely
flash in his tired gray eyes and a bit of fevered color glowing in his
sallow cheeks.

When Mrs. Pierce loudly announced the return of the men early in the
afternoon, therefore, the invalid's sister was ready to be harrowed.
There would be bitter agonies to relate--chiefly stomachic. She had
heroically resolved, moreover, not immediately to flaw the surface of
her sympathy with any gusty "I told you so!" That was a privilege sac