iving to one's best friends, robbing them of the opportunity to
extend sympathy. Winifred Blair is worrying over Charlie, yet she keeps
her troubles to herself and cheats her friends of a just privilege."

"I wish," began Danvers, then closed his lips. No one should see his
heart.

"I wish she would give you the right to protect her," said the doctor,
heartily. "What has come between you two? I had thought----"

"I do not know," acknowledged the disconsolate lover. "She was friendly.
We've seen each other quite a good deal. I thought she was one to
understand. I cannot talk as most men do--I am aware of my failing."

His eyes were more eloquent than words, as he paused. "And now she
hardly speaks to me--makes some trivial excuse to leave me with Charlie
when I call; or if he is not there she pleads an engagement. You have
noticed how Moore has been paying her marked attention? It is for her to
choose----"

When Danvers began again it was of another phase of his trouble. "Miss
Blair has doubtless heard of my financial loss, caused by that early
snowstorm and later rain, which crusted the snow until my cattle were
almost wiped out. My foreman wired me the night of the opera, you
remember. Those that were not frozen were starved to death. My
political life here in Helena is costing me a fortune."

Danvers rose and paced the floor. "It gives me the jigs, even to think
of those cattle," he burst out. "Not the financial loss, you understand,
but the suffering of dumb animals!"

"You did all you could, Phil."

"Yes. But what with a three years' drouth and no hay in the country, and
the railroads blocked so that no feed could be shipped in, even if we
could have gotten to the cattle on the range--oh, well----" The
cattleman dropped to his chair with a sigh of helplessness.

The doctor took a new turn.

"I have known you for fifteen years or more, my boy, and I never knew
you to be jealous before, much less unjust."

"I--unjust!" Danvers was startled. Never before had he faced such
accusations.

"Yes, you. You should know Winifred Blair better than to think such
thoughts as you are harboring."

"My experience with women has been unfortunate, probably; I do not
pretend to understand them--they are too complex for me."

"Tut, tut!" The gentle friend tried to turn the tide. "Not Winnie. She
is a woman to trust."

"But how can she have anything to do with Bill Moore? That is what I
can't get over."

"You shouldn