The days that followed the convention were like a dream to Danvers when he remembered them afterwards. He had scarcely picked up the old life at Fort Benton—looked over his cattle and gone over his neglected correspondence, when a telegram from the old doctor recalled him to Helena.
Arthur Latimer's tragedy had come, and Danvers, unfamiliar with death, knew no words of consolation for the father bereft of his firstborn. A numbness mercifully comes during those first hours, which makes it possible to move about and go through strange, meaningless ceremonies with a calm that surprises those who have not known the searing touch of the death angel.
A few days later he and the doctor were back at Fort Benton again, and life moved on as before. Only there was always the memory of Latimer's drawn face that no laddie's voice would lighten, no little hand caress.
The doctor hoped that the political campaign would occupy his thoughts for the present, but when the election went against Latimer he shook his head.
"Read this letter," he said to Danvers one evening. "It came to-day, and I should have sent for you if I hadn't felt so certain you would drop in. You're the one to go."
It was a letter from Winifred, and Danvers felt a peculiar sensation of satisfaction in seeing her handwriting, as if it gave him an added bond to their friendship.
But he forgot Winifred in his anxiety over the message her letter conveyed.
"I wish that you or Mr. Danvers could come to Helena," she wrote. "Judge Latimer is so changed since little Arthur's death that we sometimes fear for his reason. Since the election has gone against him there is no direct interest to take his attention and he has sunk into a deep melancholy. You could rouse him as no one else could. Please come—one or both of you."
Danvers read no further, but looked up to catch the doctor's eye. He nodded. "All right, doctor. I'll go to-night."