Donnegan's brain.

She brushed her timidity away and with the same gesture accepted
Donnegan as something more than a dangerous vagrant. She took the lamp
from the hands of the crone and sent her about her business,
disregarding the mutterings and the warnings which trailed behind the
departing form. Now she faced Donnegan, screening the light from her
eyes with a cupped hand and by the same device focusing it upon the face
of Donnegan. He mutely noted the small maneuver and gave her credit; but
for the pleasure of seeing the white of her fingers and the way they
tapered to a pink transparency at the tips, he forgot the poor figure he
must make with his soiled, ragged shirt, his unshaven face, his gaunt
cheeks.

Indeed, he looked so straight at her that in spite of her advantage with
the light she had to avoid his glance.

"I am sorry," said Lou Macon, "and ashamed because we can't take you in.
The only house on the range where you wouldn't be welcome, I know. But
my father leads a very close life; he has set ways. The ways of an
invalid, Mr. Donnegan."

"And you're bothered about speaking to him of me?"

"I'm almost afraid of letting you go in yourself."

"Let me take the risk."

She considered him again for a moment, and then turned with a nod and he
followed her up the stairs into the upper hall. The moment they stepped
into it he heard her clothes flutter and a small gale poured on them. It
was criminal to allow such a building to fall into this ruinous
condition. And a gloomy picture rose in Donnegan's mind of the invalid,
thin-faced, sallow-eyed, white-haired, lying in his bed listening to the
storm and silently gathering bitterness out of the pain of living. Lou
Macon paused again in the hall, close to a door on the right.

"I'm going to send you in to speak to my father," she said gravely.
"First I have to tell you that he's different."

Donnegan replied by looking straight at her, and this time she did not
wince from the glance. Indeed, she seemed to be probing him, searching
with a peculiar hope. What could she expect to find in him? What that
was useful to her? Not once in all his life had such a sense of
impotence descended upon Donnegan. Her father? Bah! Invalid or no
invalid he would handle that fellow, and if the old man had an acrid
temper, Donnegan at will could file his own speech to a point. But the
girl! In the meager hand which held the lamp there was a power which all
the muscles of Don