outt, so sincerely that he looked
almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.

"Oh, I'm on deck again."

Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a
significant little pause--a pause which grew painful till Albert turned
and saw Brann, and called out:

"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."

As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and
embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering
some poor apology.

"Hope y' don't blame me."

"Of course not--fortunes o' war. Nobody to blame; just my
carelessness.--Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into
the seat of honor.

The rest laughed, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He
had not finished yet.

"I'm mighty glad you don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want to say
the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's _all right_."

Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He understood that this,
coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a
ready apologist. It was a terrible victory, and he was disposed to make
it as easy for his rival as he could.

"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of
it--I'd planned to turn in a couple o' Blaine's _Twenty Years_ on the
bill."

Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived
all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his
claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been
prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature
had conquered.

No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring,
people said his passion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had
loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could
rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.

When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest
horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left
school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden
moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think
how short this day of happiness might be.

IV

At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring
was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March
was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in
the