ittle by little he realized this change in her, and was touched with the
wonder of it. He had never had any great self-love either as man or
scholar, and the thought of this fine, self-sufficient womanly soul
centering all its interests on him was humbling. Each moment his
responsibility deepened, and he heard her voice but dimly as she went
on.

"Of course we are not rich; but we are not poor, and my mother's family
is one of the oldest in Kentucky." She uttered this with a touch of her
mother's quiet dignity. "Your father need not despise us."

"So far as my father is concerned, family don't count, and neither does
money. But he confidently expects me to take up his business in Chicago,
and I suppose it is my duty to do so. If he finds me looking fit he may
order me into the ranks at once."

"I'll go there--I'll do anything you want me to do," she urged. "You can
tell your father that I'll help you in the office. I can learn. I'm ready
to use a typewriter--anything."

He was silent in the face of her naive expression of self-sacrificing
love, and after a moment she added, hesitatingly: "I wish I could meet
your father. Perhaps he'd come up here if you asked him to do so?"

He seized upon the suggestion. "By George! I believe he would. I don't
want to go to town. I just believe I'll wire him that I'm laid up here
and can't come." Then a shade of new trouble came over his face. How
would the stern, methodical old business man regard this slovenly ranch
and its primitive ways? She felt the question in his face.

"You're afraid to have him come," she said, with the same disconcerting
penetration which had marked every moment of her interview thus far.
"You're afraid he wouldn't like me?"

With almost equal frankness he replied: "No. I think he'd like _you_, but
this town and the people up here would gall him. Order is a religion with
him. Then he's got a vicious slant against all this conservation
business--calls it tommy-rot. He and your father might lock horns first
crack out of the box. But I'll risk it. I'll wire him at once."

A knock at the door interrupted him, and Mrs. McFarlane's voice, filled
with new excitement, called out: "Berrie, the District office is on the
wire."

Berrie opened the door and confronted her mother, who said: "Mr. Evingham
'phones that the afternoon papers contain an account of a fight at Coal
City between Settle and one of Alec Belden's men, and that the District
Forester is comin