. After all, one learns to be content rather easily, which is in several ways fortunate. Then you instilled fresh aspirations––it’s the right word in this case––into me, and I made another attempt, only to be hurled back again. There doesn’t seem to be much use in attempting the impossible.”

“Then a thing is to be considered impossible after one fails twice? There are men who fail––and go on again––all their lives long.”

“I’m afraid,” Nasmyth declared in a dull tone, “I am not that kind of man. After all, to be flung down from the station you were born to––I’m using your own words––and turned suddenly adrift to labour with one’s hands takes a good deal of the courage out of one. I almost think if you could put yourself in my place you would understand.”

Laura smiled in a suggestive fashion, and looked down at the hands she laid upon her knee. They were capable, as well as shapely, and, as he had noticed more than once, the signs of toil were very plain on them.

“I never did an hour’s useful work before I came out West,” she said.

She had produced the effect she probably desired, for in the midst of his sudden pity for her Nasmyth was troubled with a sense of shame. This girl, he realized, had been reared as gently as he had been himself, and he knew that she now toiled most of every day at what in the older country would have been considered most unwomanly tasks. Still, she had borne with it cheerfully, and had courage to spare for others whose strength was less than hers.

He sat silent for almost a minute, looking down between the great pines into the valley, and, as he did so, he vaguely felt the influence of the wilderness steal over him. The