u hanging on to yourself like grim
death; and, in time, they'll come to where they'll trust your grip to
pull them out of danger, too, when they get to funking. It's an
almighty hard job you've got ahead of you, and an endless one; still,
knowing you, I know you will put it through and come out of it with
your colours flying. Meanwhile," the clear eyes came back to focus;
"hang on to Brenton."

"If I can."

"As long as you can, I mean. The time may come when, like myself,
you'll have to let him go. In the mean time, though, he is worth the
holding."

"Brenton is pure gold," Reed said quietly. "I have known him for many
years."

But his companion shook his head.

"Gold, if you will; but not the purest. There is a dash of alloy we may
as well admit, at the start. Else, it will only muddle things, later
on. Brenton is good stuff, but a little weak. There's something in him
that always will make him stumble and fall down just short of his
ideals."

"Naturally, being human," Opdyke assented rather dryly. "For that
matter, Whittenden, which one of us does not?"

But Whittenden made no answer. His hands clasped now at the back of his
head, his eyes were resting thoughtfully upon the bright, brave face
before him, a thinner face than it had been used to be, more hollow
about the temples where the wavy hair clung closely; upon the swaddled
figure which, only a year before, had tramped the Colorado mountains,
lording it over many men. And now, to the burden of his own that Reed
was bearing, he had added the responsibility of watching over Brenton,
of guarding Brenton's weakness with his own great strength. Was it just
and right to thrust this second burden on to Opdyke? However,
self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the
victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis,
needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness.
Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in
on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to
lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness. But ease was
not the main thing, after all.

Suddenly he flung himself forward in his chair, and put his two hands
down upon the straight, lean shoulders underneath the rug.

"Reed," he said, with an abruptness he did not often show to any one;
"if one man ever loved another, it's I with you. For God's sake, then,
don't let the time ever come between us when