did. It took her to her death, and in the long run has made you pretty

much what you are. So I do not see that I can blame you in all things, but I do blame you for the pig-headed obstinacy and foolishness you showed in Denver. You had a great opportunity to befriend those who had befriended you and would have helped you, and you wilfully, even maliciously, threw it away.”

In spite of his feelings Justin maintained a discreet silence. His longing for something more than a bare recognition of his relationship he saw was not to be gratified. He had returned the diary and the Bible to his pocket, where he felt them close against his heart. They seemed akin to an actual memory of his mother, and could not be taken from him, whatever happened. Their pressure was almost as the touch of his mother’s warm hand on his bosom.

“If you like,” Davison went on, “you may transfer yourself to this house and remain here, doing what work on the ranch you please. Some of the cowboys have been dismissed, and others will be soon. But for this fact that you are my son I should forbid you to come upon the place. There is going to be a change in the business, too; your votes at Denver helped to make that necessary, and perhaps in that change you may find work more congenial to you than ranch work. Think it over. I want to do what is right by you. I will see that you have employment if you want it, and in my will I shall see that you are not wholly unprovided for. That is all.”

He arose, and Justin stood up in flushed confusion, having said not a word either in justification of himself or his mother. He had no words now, as he passed from the room and from the house, though if he could have voiced anything it would have been the disappointment that murmured in his heart.

With the memory of that interview oppressing him, Justin questioned whether he had not after all been stubborn, pig-headed, and cruel. He reflected that perhaps he had been, even though he had sought to do only that which was right. His mother, he had been told, possessed an “uncomfortable conscience,” and he did not doubt he had one himself. It could not be wrong to do right, of course, but at times it seemed very inexpedient. Should a man bend himself to expediency? If he had done so, his father would have received him doubtless with warm words, instead of that biting chill which frosted the very glance of the sunshine.

Standing in the yard oppressed and tortured by doubt, Justin saw Lucy Davison coming toward him from the direction of the little grove. The cottonwoods were still bare, but that she had visited them seemed a good omen, and he moved toward her.

Her brown eyes smiled as they met his. She was temptingly beautiful; a mature woman now, with the beauty of a fragrant flower. Her clear complexion had not changed since her girlhood, and the tint which emotion gave to her cheeks was as the soft blush of the ripening peach. She was more beautiful than when a girl; all the angularities of girlhood were gone; and when from his greater height Justin looked down on her rounded throat and swelling bosom, and caught that kindly light in her eyes, he forgot the chill of the room from which he had come and the cold calm of his father’s speech.

“I am afraid you are a bad, bad boy,” she said, with a touch of sympathy, as she put her hand on his arm, “but I hope Uncle Philip hasn’t been saying terrible things to you. You have been to see him, I know?”

“Yes, I have been to see him, and the interview wasn’t wholly pleasant. Perhaps I have been the bad boy you suggest, and he may be justified; I’m sure I don’t know. All I know is I tried to do what was right, and appear to have made a mix of it.”

“Come in and we will talk it over. Uncle Philip told me this morning that you may come and go all you want to, or even make your home here now. That is pleasant news, anyway, isn’t it?”

Her pleasant manner softened the recollection of that painful interview with Philip Davison. So Justin passed from an unpleasant interview to one so pleasant that it almost took the bitterness and the sting out of the first.