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“If you cannot go back, you can go forward,” she said, firmly. “Why should you be the only man in this beautiful land who lives like this, who is idle when there is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when there is so much time to sleep at night?”

A faint flush came on the grayish, colorless face. “I don’t sleep at night,” he returned, moodily.

“Why don’t you sleep?” she asked.

He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake with his foot. The tail moved; he stamped upon the head with almost frenzied violence, out of keeping with his sluggishness.

She turned away, yet looked back once more–she felt tragedy around her. “It is never too late to mend,” she said, and moved on, but stopped, for a young man came running from the woods toward her.

“I’ve had a hunt–such a hunt for you!” the young man said, eagerly, then stopped short when he saw to whom she had been talking. A look of disgust came upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm.

“In Heaven’s name, why did you talk to that man?” he said. “You ought not to have trusted yourself near him.”

“What has he done?” she asked. “Is he so bad?”

“I’ve heard about him. I inquired the other day. He was once in a better position as a ranchman–ten years ago; but he came into some money one day, and he changed at once. He never had a good character; even before he got his money he used to gamble, and was getting a bad name. Afterward he began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently his money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had fastened on him, and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working for a month, sometimes idle for months. There’s something sinister about him, there’s some mystery; for poverty, or drink even–and he doesn’t drink much now–couldn’t make him what he is. He doesn’t seek company, and he walks sometimes endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as he can. How did you come to speak to him, Grace?”

She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her voice, for she was thinking of the man from a standpoint which her companion could not realize. She was also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten years ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch behind them had been a different man; and there had shot into her mind the face of a ranchman she had seen with her father, the railway king, one evening when his “special” had stopped at a railway station on his tour through Montana–ten years ago. Why did the face of the ranchman which had fixed itself on her memory then, because he had come on the evening of her birthday and had spoiled it for her, having taken her father away from her for an hour–why did his face come to her now? What had it to do with the face of this outcast she had just left?

“What is his name?” she asked at last.

“Roger Lygon,” he answered.

“Roger Lygon,” she repeated, mechanically. Something in the man chained her thought–his face that moment when her hand saved him and the awful fear left him and a glimmer of light came into his eyes.

But her lover beside her broke into song. He was happy with her. Everything was before him, her beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not dwell upon dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp, sweet, evening air:

“Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses
That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?’
‘I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes,
That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.’
‘Oh, come, let us camp in the North Trail together,
With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'”