less while another man
plays out my last and boldest game for me. Lord! what wouldn't I give
for just three months of my old vigor! Still, I'll never be fit again,
and as I must lean on somebody, I'm glad it should be you."

"Lean on me! You have given me the chance of my life, sir. You don't
look quite comfortable there. Let me settle that rug for you," said
Geoffrey, and as with clumsy gentleness he rearranged the sick man's
wrappings, Helen came unobserved into the room. She read the pity
beneath the smile on the younger man's bronze face and noticed how
willingly his hard fingers did their unaccustomed work. Her heart grew
soft towards Geoffrey as she heard her father's sigh of content. The
sight touched, though, for a reason she was ashamed of, it also
troubled her. Unwilling to disturb them, she merely smiled when
Thurston saw her, and found herself a seat in a corner.

"My brain's not so clear as it used to be. No use hiding things.
Why," began Savine, and Geoffrey, who surmised that he had not seen his
daughter, knocked over a medicine bottle with his elbow and spent some
time noisily groping under the table for it. The action might have
deceived one of his own sex, but Helen, who wondered what his motive
was, grew piqued as well as curious.

"I've been worrying over things lately," continued Savine. "There was
one of the rancher's hired men in and he told our folks a mixed story
about a sluice gate bursting. You never mentioned it to me. Now I
have a hazy notion that I made a drawing for a gate one day, when I
was--sick, we'll say. I looked for it afterwards and couldn't find it.
I've been thinking over it considerable lately."

"Then you are very foolish, sir," declared Geoffrey. "Of course, we
have had one or two minor breakages, but nothing we were unable to
remedy. Just now everything is going ahead in the most satisfactory
manner."

Helen, who watched the speaker, decided that he was concealing
something, and also fancied her father did not seem quite satisfied.

"I've been wondering whether it was that gate which burst. See here,
Geoffrey, I feel you have had bad trouble; isn't it a little mean not
to tell me? You will remember I'm still Julius Savine--and only a
little while ago there was no man in the province who dared to try to
fool me."

A measure of the speaker's former spirit revealed itself in a clearer
vibration of his voice, and, raising himself in his chair, Savine
b