ecting to spend one night, but events
of the last few hours had induced him to change his plans, and he now
made up his mind to stay several days. He was burning to be back in the
oil fields, to be sure; every hour away from them was an hour wasted,
and although he told himself it was his feud that drew him, he knew
better. As a matter of fact, when he thought of Texas it was of Wichita
Falls, and when he visualized the latter place it was to picture a
cottage with the paint off or a small office with the sign, "Tom and
Bob Parker, Real Estate and Insurance."

He had been eagerly, selfishly, counting the hours until his return,
but here, it seemed, was work to be done, a task that he alone could
accomplish, and his decision to remain had been made final when Allie
Briskow told him with tremulous earnestness that he had saved her
life--when she confessed that she had intended to kill herself, and why.

Naturally Gray had put no faith in that wild declaration, nevertheless
it was plain that the girl--that all three Briskows--needed a friend to
guide them. He sighed with resignation, but reflected that, inasmuch as
he had put his hand to the plow, he must turn the furrow. After all, he
could well afford to spare a week to put that girl on the road to
happiness.

CHAPTER XVI

From the day of their first meeting, Henry Nelson and Calvin Gray had
clashed. No two people could be more different in disposition and
temper, hence it was only natural that every characteristic, every
action of the one should have aroused the other's antagonism. Nelson
was a cool, selfish, calculating plodder with little imagination and
less originality; he thought in grooves. His was a splendid type of
mind for a banker. He had but one weak point--_viz_., a villainous
temper, a capacity for blind, vindictive rage--a weakness, truly, for a
man who dealt in money--but a weakness that lent him a certain humanity
and without which he would have been altogether too mechanical, too
colorless, too efficient. Nature seldom errs by making supermen. A drab
man, in many ways, Nelson was extraordinary mainly in this, that his
mind followed straight, obvious channels, and that never, except under
the urge of extreme passion, did he depart from the strictly logical
line of action. In this, of course, he was superior to the average
person, who too frequently undertakes the unusual. Calvin Gray's
ebullience, his dash, his magnificence of demeanor, could be