But as he went he turned round and apostrophised the old cabin and the poor flat land that had once been his, and his wife

that he left there.

"Good-bye," he said. "Good-bye, Ellen. "Good-bye, Ellen. I think I'll always be able to remember ye kindly. But altogether you've taught me a lesson I'll try to lay to heart. To git rich or bust-no more farming for me. And I reckon to keep single this time, you bet!"

PART II.
I.

MR. CLEMENT L. BRIGGS was sitting in a well-furnished office with maps and plans on the walls, and was nursing a knee thoughtfully as he stared at one of them.

It was five years since he came West, to "git rich or bust," and, strange to say, he had not "busted." Far from it; he was a "silver king "—one of the richest men in San Medane.

And a more handsome man than Mr. Briggs never "bucked" hazard in that city. The extraordinary renewal of his youth still held good-he looked scarcely more than five-and-twenty. Moreover, prosperity had softened his manner; he dressed simply, but as became a man of his position; and his English was perhaps a trifle purer than formerly.

But he was unfortunate.

His views of life were those of a

man of forty-six; the toughness of his earlier experience had put great seams and scars upon his face and his mind; and though they had faded from the one, they were permanently scored upon the other. In him the vigour of youth maintained a ceaseless and losing battle with the disillusioned view of experienced age.

He was in love once more, with all the fervour of early manhood; but he was bent on keeping off that shore where once he had suffered shipwreck. He had got out his one great anchor, and now he was holding on to it grimly-"to keep single, you bet!"

He sat on this particular day musing absently, and trying to contrast (as he often did now) his present position with that of a bygone time-to find out wherein he was happier; and he did not succeed. He had a wistful expression; and if one had asked him the reason of that look he would perhaps have said, simply, that he was "lonesome."

It was the anniversary of his wife's death. "It's a queer thing," he mused.

"I swore then there was

two things to make a man happy-to be rich, so as to go where he liked and have what he liked; and to be single and free.

don't pan out.

But it

Dorethy... Dorethy. . . . Some day or other, when I'm lookin' over her shoulder to look at her type-copy, I'll forget about Ellen, and... Lord, what a pretty shoulder and figure she has ! . . ." His former experience had been a tough one. He had been burnt once. He knew the risk of trading for a "salted" claim.

"Ellen, now. . . . She was lively and good-lookin' when I married her. And perhaps she loved me then-I ain't no judge. But we hadn't been married a week- Well, maybe it was my fault. And it's no good where you're no account. She thought I wasn't no account. And it 'ud be the same with Dorethy. Lord... Lord. . . ."

He got up restlessly, and walked to the window to look out upon the mountains. But their eternal calm held no kindred spirit for his restlessness.

"Dorethy... Dorethy. . . . What a good girl she is, and how she does work to try and please me. Just because I took her out of the street when her poor father died, and then gave her work in my office, she's that grateful. . . . But no; that ain't what you want when you marry a wife. And it 'ud all wear off. I've swore to keep single."

He stared out at the mountains till from their calm silence he seemed to get an answer. His unquiet face settled with a sudden determination.

"It's the way.

And the only way.

And the sooner the better. enough to do it, and then it

If I put it off a day I mayn't be strong

'ud be all up with me."

He touched the hand-bell on his desk with sudden decision, and a fair-haired girl rose from a type-writer in a little den adjacent and came in. She was a timid girl, and she came in with a shyness that had seemed to increase as the days went by.

"Dorethy," he said abruptly, but kindly, and facing her as she stood, "I'm goin' to Europe."

She looked at him so blankly that he went on quickly

"I've made my pile-as much as I care about—and I'm goin' to shut down and enjoy myself. Europe's the place for that, and that's where I'm goin'."

The blood coursed across her face with each heart-beat, showing her pale and flushed by turns.

"Don't be feared, Dorethy; I ain't goin' to leave you unprovided

for. You've been a-a sort of daughter to me for a long while, Dorethy; a sort of daughter-I'm forty-six, you know, and you are only eighteen. . . . And so I will arrange for you to live comfortably with the Wilsons

"Oh, no, no," she said quickly. "Oh, Mr. Briggs, you say I am a sort of daughter to you "-she raised to him great troubled eyes that stirred him strangely-" will you go away from me?"

"I'm only a-goin' to Europe," said Briggs uneasily.

"To Europe!" she said, in a low voice, as if trying the ring of that word upon her understanding.

They were facing one another, and for a moment there was silence.

"Here," said Briggs harshly, giving her a letter; "make a copy of this. I'm goin' round to lunch, and then I'll go and see Mrs.

Wilson."

But outside he stopped, and leant against the wall as if dizzy. "Most too late," he said; "termorrer, and I shouldn't a' managed it. I was 'most done for as it was."

But Dorothy had gone back to her type-writer and sat there awhile, very still, and looking down at the letter which she held in her hands. And before she had made her copy of it, carefully, as she worked always, it was wet with her tears.

II.

Several years had passed along, and Briggs had spent them very restlessly, very aimlessly, wandering in many lands. He was ageing again fast, and the careworn face and bald forehead that had been his when his wife Ellen died were coming to him again.

He was in Paris, and was walking in the garden of the Tuileries. He took a turn up to the farther end, and then, returning in an absent-minded way, seated himself in as quiet a spot as he could find, and took from his pocket-book two letters.

One he looked at awhile, but did not read. As he looked at it there came the wistful expression to his face that through all these years had been so often there. The letter was the one that he had given to Dorothy to copy, and which he had kept ever since. It was old and worn; but had been guarded so carefully that faint smudges, as of tears, were upon it still.

"I don't know," he said to himself after awhile, with a little sigh; "perhaps . . . after all hard on her too."

I made a mistake. Perhaps it was

The second letter he had received only that morning, and the old trade-marks upon his face deepened and grew broader as he read the pages once more. He let his eyes rest awhile upon the signature-in careless characters, "Rupe Watson."

"A begging-letter. A real downright begging-letter. Rupe Watson, Dorothy's husband, writes a whining begging-letter like this! And what does he do with all the money? First, fifty thousand dollars that he had from me, to start him in life, when he married her. Then, two years later, another fifty thousand to start him again. Now that's all gone, and he's whining for more. . . I don't like the look of it."

"Hello, Briggs!" said a cheery voice beside him. It startled him. "Hello, Poyning! glad to see you. How are you? I didn't know you had got back from the States."

"Oh, yes, came over a week ago." And the two friends walked down the garden together, talking.

"You say you were out in San Medane," said Briggs suddenly, after a pause in their conversation. "Did you ever hear of a man called Rupert Watson out that way?"

The letter of Dorothy's husband, that he had just been reading, had been addressed to him from that town.

"Rupe Watson?" echoed Poyning with a grim laugh; "rather think so! He came up from the South, end of last year, with a bushel of money, and led such a life he was through it in six months. Then he suddenly got flush again-another fifty thousand sent him unexpectedly by an old friend, he says. So he turned serious and went in for mining, and has dropped it all again-every cent. When I left he was selling his horse and buggy, and that's the last thing he had got left, out of all he had before, except his wife."

"Ah, yes; his wife. What's she like?"

"A fair-haired woman, rather wasted, with great hollow eyes. When are you going back, Briggs?"

"Termorrer," said Briggs, trying to speak naturally, but with a curious restriction in his throat. "Termorrer, by the French boat

out of Havre.".

"To-morrow? That's rather sudden, isn't it?"

"Oh, no," said Briggs calmly; "settled it a month ago."

He went down to Havre that night, and caught the Transatlantic liner. But all the way over he was wishing he had started months earlier. "A wasted woman, with great hollow eyes." The expression haunted him.

"I've bin a cussed fool!" he kept on thinking dully. "Rupe

Watson was only a good-looking boy, so to speak, and I go and set him out with a pile o' dollars-I might 'a known he 'ud break out and act foolish. And then to set him up again, at a minute's notice, just because he asked for it. Why, its flyin' in the face o' Providence. It's enough to have sent the soberest man reckless. Please God, I'll set him straight again, and keep him straight. It's the only way, I reckon. And Dorethy loves him . . . of course she does and so my bein' there won't trouble her . . . of course not . . just a bit o' pain for me . . . just a bit o' pain . . but that ain't no call for to put her out o' the way. And, anyhow, it's got to be; I'll take him in hand, and keep him straight, somehow."

He went straight up country to the Devil's Run, and it was soon known all over the district that Rupe Watson had once more unexpectedly turned up a handful of trumps. For he had been taken into partnership by C. L. Briggs, the well-known "silver king." Rupert himself trumpeted the fact in San Medane.

But there was one person from whom he carefully concealed the name of the man who was once more helping him; and that one was Dorothy. And though Briggs was now Watson's partner he avoided his house; he came there but once.

And Dorothy reproached him for it. On the one occasion when he came to see her, looking up at him with timid eyes and with a shyness that in his presence had never seemed to leave her, yet she said reproachfully:

"Do you not forget your old friends rather quickly, Mr. Briggs ?' "How?" he asked, taken aback.

"You have been here, in the town, nearly three weeks, and you do much business with my husband . . . do you not?" speaking with uncertainty in her voice. She had a dim knowledge (however much Rupert might try to conceal the fact from her) that her husband and Briggs were much together in business hours.

"Yes," said Briggs simply, "there is a good deal of business between us just now."

He was paying away thousands of dollars daily in the work of setting his "partner" straight again.

"And yet," she went on with timid reproach, "you never come here. You have never even called to see me. You have forgotten the old time, when you were so kind to me, when I was 'Dorothy' to you. I thought you were my friend, and that you liked me . . . just a little . . . then."

"That's it, Dorethy," he said, turning away a little, that she might not see the shadow on his face. "I liked ye then . . . a little.