opening, the head and shoulders hidden within the
inclosure. Lucy was speaking with the doctor.

Susan gave a sharp exclamation and stopped. It was too late to
interfere. Lucy withdrew her head and came running back, crying
triumphantly:

"Your father's coming. He says he's not sick at all. He's putting on
his coat."

Following close on her words came the doctor, emerging slowly, for he
was weak and unsteady. In the garish light of the afternoon he looked
singularly white and bleached, like a man whose warm, red-veined life
is dried into a sere grayness of blood and tissue. He was out of
harmony with the glad living colors around him, ghostlike amid the
brightness of the flowering earth and the deep-dyed heaven. He met his
daughter's eyes and smiled.

"Your prisoner has escaped you, Missy."

She tried to control herself, to beat down the surge of anger that
shook her. Meeting him she implored with low-toned urgence:

"Father, you can't do it. Go back. You're too sick."

He pushed her gently away, his smile gone.

"Go back, Missy? The woman is suffering, dear."

"I know it, and I don't care. You're suffering, you're sick. She
should have known better than to come. It's her fault, not ours.
Because she was so foolhardy is no reason why you should be victimized."

His gravity was crossed by a look of cold, displeased surprise, a look
she had not seen directed upon her since once in her childhood when she
had told him a lie.

"I don't want to feel ashamed of you, Missy," he said quietly, and
putting her aside went on to the wagon.

She turned away blinded with rage and tears. She had a dim vision of
David and fled from it, then felt relief at the sight of Daddy John.
He saw her plight, and hooking his hand in her arm took her behind the
tent, where she burst into furious words and a gush of stifled weeping.

"No good," was the old man's consolation. "Do you expect the doctor to
lie comfortable in his blanket when there's some one around with a
pain?"

"Why did she come? Why didn't she stay at home?"

"That ain't in the question," he said, patting her arm; "she's here,
and she's got the pain, and you and I know the doctor."

The McMurdo's prairie schooner rolled off to a place where the lupines
were high, and Glen pitched the tent. The men, not knowing what else
to do to show their sympathy, laid the fires and cleaned the camp.
Then the two younger ones shouldered their rifles and wande