"Take back your gold, for gold it cannot buy me;
Make me your wife, 'tis all I ask of you."
When they parted she said, "You must think about leaving here. It's time you rode out into the world. I think my brother will be back from his cattle-driving trip to-morrow, and I mean to bring him to see your pictures very soon. Perhaps he will suggest something for you."
"This moonlight does such wonderful things to your face," he remarked.
"Good night! I'm sorry you have so far to go."
"It isn't far enough," he answered, still searching her face. "Not half far enough—I have so much thinking—so much thinking to do."
CHAPTER V
INTO THE PAST AND OUT
IT was not without concern that Mrs. Laithe awaited the return of her brother the following day. The cattle drive that had beguiled him from habits of extreme and enforced precision had occupied a fortnight, and she understood the life to be sorely trying to any but the rugged. Earnestly had she sought to dissuade him from the adventure, for insomnia had long beset him, and dyspepsia marked him for its plaything. Eloquently exposed to him had been the folly of hoping for sleep on stony ground after vainly wooing it in the softest of beds with an air pillow inflated to the nice degree of resiliency. And the unsuitability of camp fare to a man who had long been sustained by an invalid's diet had been shrewdly set forth. None the less he had persisted, caught in the frenzy of desperation that sometimes overwhelms even the practiced dyspeptic.
"It can't be worse, Sis," he had tragically assured her at parting. "If I've got to writhe out my days, why, I shall writhe like a gentleman, that's all. I can at least chuck those baby foods and perish with some dignity."
"But you're not leaving your medicines, those drops and things?" she had asked, in real alarm.