for the
life that was to come to her.

He was richly satisfied.

"Carol, this is the most wonderful thing in the world, companionship
like this, being together, thinking in harmony, hoping the same hopes,
sharing the same worries, planning the same future. Companionship is
life to me now. There is nothing like it in all the world."

Carol snuggled against his shoulder happily.

"Love is wonderful," he went on, "but companionship is broader, for it
is love, and more beyond. It is the development of love. It is the
full blossom of the seed that has been planted in the heart. Service
is splendid, too. But after all, it takes companionship to perfect
service. One can not work alone. You are the completion of my desire
to work, and you are the inspiration of my ability to work. Yes,
companionship is life,--bigger than love and bigger than service, for
companionship includes them both."

CHAPTER XVI

DEPARTED SPIRITS

As the evenings grew colder, the camp chairs on the mesa were deserted,
and the chattering "chasers" gathered indoors, sometimes in one or
another of the airy tent cottages, sometimes before the cheerful blaze
of the logs in the fireplace of the parlors, but oftenest of all they
flocked into Number Six of McCormick Building, where David was confined
to his cot. Always there was laughter in Number Six, merry jesting,
ready repartee. So it became the mecca of those, who, even more
assiduously than they chased the cure, sought after laughter and joy.
In the parlors the guests played cards, but in Number Six, deferring
silently to David's calling, they pulled out checkers and parcheesi,
and fought desperate battles over the boards. But sometimes they
fingered the dice and the checkers idly, leaning back in their chairs,
and talked of temperatures, and hypodermics, and doctors, and war, and
ghosts.

"I know this happened," said the big Canadian one night. "It was in my
own home and I was there. So I can swear to every word of it. We came
out from Scotland, and took up a big homestead in Saskatchewan. We
threw up a log house and began living in it before it was half done.
Evenings, the men came in from the ranches around, and we sat by the
fire in the kitchen and smoked and told stories. Joined on to the
kitchen there was a shed, which was intended for a summer kitchen. But
just then we had half a dozen cots in it, and the hands slept there.
One night one of the boys said he had a h