ll of sympathy, and her desire to comfort her
stricken son led to shy references to his "trouble" which made him
savage. He went about the ranch so grimly, so spiritlessly, that Claude
despairingly remarked:

"I wish the Lord that girl _had_ got you. You're as cheerful to have
around as a poisoned hound. Why don't you go down to the Springs and sit
on her porch? That's about all you're good for now."

This was a bull's-eye shot, for Roy's desire by day and his dream by
night was to trail her to her home; but the fear of her scornful
greeting, the thought of a cutting query as to the meaning of his call,
checked him at the very threshold of departure a dozen times.

He had read of love-lorn people in the _Saturday Storyteller_, which
found its way into the homes of the ranchers, but he had always sworn or
laughed at their sufferings as a part of the play. He felt quite
differently about these cases. Love was no longer a theme for jest, an
abstraction, a far-off trouble; it had become a hunger more intolerable
than any he had ever known, a pain that made all others he had
experienced transitory and of no account.

Even Claude admitted the reality of the disease by repeating: "Well, you
_have_ got it bad. Your symptoms are about the worst ever. You're locoed
for fair. You'll be stepping high and wide if you don't watch out."

In some mysterious way the whole valley now shared in a knowledge of the
raid on the post-office, as well as in an understanding of Roy's
"throw-down" by the postmaster's niece, and the expression of this
interest in his affairs at last drove the young rancher to desperation.
He decided to leave the state. "I'm going to Nome," he said to his
brothers one day.

"Pious thought," declared Claude. "The climate may freeze this poison
out of you. Why, sure--go! You're no good on earth here."

Roy did not tell him or his mother that he intended to go by way of the
Springs, in the wish to catch one last glimpse of his loved one before
setting out for the far northland. To speak with her was beyond his
hope. No, all he expected was a chance glimpse of her in the street, the
gleam of her face in the garden. "Perhaps I may pass her gate at night,
and see her at the window."

IV

The town to him was a maze of bewildering complexity and magnificence,
and he wandered about for a day in awkward silence, hesitating to
inquire the way to the Converse home. He found it at last, a pretty
cottage standing on