ir chances over that fall
above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can't seem to find things as I
did in the cabin."

"Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the
chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I've left a hole for your
tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that."

"And we'd be fine and cozy here in the winter--if it wer'n't for the
women--a--a--now I'm blundering. I'd never turn them out if they lived
there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might
have had--if you'd said, 'Here it is, father,' but now, it would have
have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder
than I did the men, and it's the longing for the son I held in my
arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years.
The mother--gone--The son I might have had."

"I can't say that--to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay
until I have paid for my crime. But I'll be more to you than sons are
to their fathers. I'll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and
love you more. I'll live for you even with the curse on me, and if
need be, I'll die for you."

"It's enough. I'll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what
I have to tell you?"

"I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can't ask it--unless I'm able
to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It
drives me wild."

"You'll have it yet to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can't
be helped like bearing it. I don't mean to lie down under it like a
dumb beast--but just take it up and bear it. That's what you're doing
now, and sometime you'll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and
again, when it's right to laugh--and even jest, on occasion. It's been
done and done well. It's good for a man to do it. The lass down there
at the cabin is doing it--and the mother is not. She's living in the
past. Maybe she can't help it."

"When I first came on them out there in the desert, she seemed brave
and strong. He was a poor, crippled man, with enormous vitality and a
leonine head. The two women adored him and lived only for him, and he
never knew it. He lived for an ideal and would have died for it. He
did not speak English as well as they. I used to wish I could
understand him, for he had a poet's soul, and eyes like his
daughter's. He seemed to carry some secret with him, and no doubt was
followed about the world as he thought he was. Fleeing myself, I could
not know,