m spend money like water to hold his own. Jack's
broke."

Stella's head drooped. Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, all
grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered her soft
fingers that rested on his bed.

"It's a pity everything's gone to pot like that, Stell," he said softly.
"I've grown a lot wiser in human ways the last two years. You taught me
a lot, and Jack a lot, and Linda the rest. It seems a blamed shame you
and Jack came to a fork in the road. Oh, he never chirped. I've just
guessed it the last few weeks. I owe him a lot that he'll never let me
pay back in anything but good will. I hate to see him get the worst of
it from every direction. He grins and doesn't say anything. But I know
it hurts. There can't be anything much wrong between you two. Why don't
you forget your petty larceny troubles and start all over again?"

"I can't," she whispered. "It wouldn't work. There's too many scars. Too
much that's hard to forget."

"Well, you know about that better than I do," Benton said thoughtfully.
"It all depends on how you _feel_."

The poignant truth of that struck miserably home to her. It was not a
matter of reason or logic, of her making any sacrifice for her
conscience sake. It depended solely upon the existence of an emotion she
could not definitely invoke. She was torn by so many emotions, not one
of which she could be sure was the vital, the necessary one. Her heart
did not cry out for Jack Fyfe, except in a pitying tenderness, as she
used to feel for Jack Junior when he bumped and bruised himself. She had
felt that before and held it too weak a crutch to lean upon.

The nurse came in with a cup of broth for Benton, and Stella went away
with a dumb ache in her breast, a leaden sinking of her spirits, and
went out to sit on the porch steps. The minutes piled into hours, and
noon came, when Linda wakened. Stella forced herself to swallow a cup of
tea, to eat food; then she left Linda sitting with her husband and went
back to the porch steps again.

As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw trousers
and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the road, a burly
woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's crew.

"Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. Say--ah--"

He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an uneasiness, a
hesitation in his manner.

"What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly. "How is everything up the
lake?"

I