r pity," he ended it. "I am the wrong sort of a man
for you."

She sat and watched him put the room in order, and that hurt her more
than anything else, for he would not let her help. He made her change
her high-heeled boots for moccasins which he brought and laced upon her
feet; but the remainder of the day it was the old Steve who helped her
over the bad bits of going and talked disconnectedly of many things
meanwhile. And yet no longer the old Steve, who had been so entirely
her own. Hers was the sad face when they entered the clearing at
Thirty-Mile and a hoarse shout saluted her return. In her father's
embrace she clung and wondered that she did not cry. And two pages had
turned for her that day, for she sent Wickersham back his ring the same
night the private car rolled down to Morrison.

Harrigan was with Archibald Wickersham when the package, unaccompanied
by explanation, reached the latter in his hotel room in town. Harrigan
was waiting for a reply to a question which he had just asked, when
Wickersham opened the box and sat fingering for a while the thin hoop
of gold with its single brilliant stone. Once Fat Joe had spoken
prophetically; this was the hour he had foreseen. And when Wickersham
raised his head the riverman's battered face lighted shockingly with
triumph.

"Go out and get him," said Wickersham. "And see that you get him--for
good!"

CHAPTER XXIII

TO-MORROW--

For two days and two nights the girl fought on alone against the outcry
of her own heart, and as on a former occasion she chose again the open
roads for her battlefield. While she pounded Ragtime mercilessly over
the little-traveled northern highways, she struggled rebelliously with
stubborn arguments which only left her more and more bewildered, the
more conclusive they became. She summoned parallels by the score to
her support, but she lacked the trick of facile finality, somehow,
which had always marked his usage of such argument. Hard moments she
knew when she closed her teeth tight upon her decision and told herself
that it was final, but the next moment, after she had laid whip across
the black horse's flank and faced homeward, she was biting her lips in
shaken, panic contemplation of another thought which would not be
denied.

There were times without number when Barbara hated the one whose very
gentleness toward her was making her position hardest to maintain;
times when she hated the work which, absorbin