How pretty she had looked, in spite of her shabby dress; how her hair had shone in the sun! How gentle and sweet and good she had been to her little brothers and sisters! Even the strange woman in the C. P. R. shack had melted before Nettie's shy effort to help her in those days, reflected the unhappy Cyril. No one could have resisted her, and he told himself that it was small wonder that he had "fallen so hard" for her. He had seen many women in the big cities of America, but had found no face like Nettie's. No, he wouldn't change his girl for any girl in the States. And as in his thought he called her "his," he awoke suddenly to the realization that Nettie was "his" no longer; someone had stolen her heart from him! Yet such a longing was on him to see the beloved face again, that he resolved to risk her displeasure by going to Bar Q before burying himself in the deep woods at the lumber camp.
On the road he fell in with a couple of riders from the hill country, and their suggestive gossip aroused him somewhat from his gloom, for he caught the girl's name and the sneer that came into their voices caused him to sit up abruptly, his hat pushed back, and his eyes full of dangerous interrogation. They protested they had only been "stringing" him, and rode rapidly off. What they had hinted was that the quicker the girl at Bar Q was married, the better, and that he, Cyril Stanley, had come back only just in time.
Cyril turned this over heavily in his mind, shaking his head as though the problem were beyond him, but he changed his course away from the hill, deciding to spend a few days at his homestead. He would stay in the little house he had built for Nettie; he wanted to look over the place that was to have been their home. He would go to Bar Q later. At least, Nettie would not refuse to bid him good-by.
As he rode along, his hat over his eyes, smarting tears bit at the lids, and the heart of the lad who used once to go singing along the trail and about his work was heavy as lead within him.
At the homely little cabin, faith and confidence in Nettie seemed to come back to him; perhaps her strange behavior had all been some hideous mistake. Perhaps she had been merely angry at his going to Barstairs. Well, a girl had a right to be angry, and maybe she had gotten over it by now. There was no accounting for a girl's moods, he reasoned; he "wasn't no saint himself" to hold anything against her. If only Nettie would smile at him again he would forget all he had suffered during all those cruel months. If only she would look at him and speak to him as she used to do. Nettie! His girl! His own, out of all the world. It had been love at first sight; so much they had always agreed on, and she had been fond of repeating that it was also a love that would never die. She had meant it then, as they sat hand in hand amongst the berry bushes, with the evening sunlight on the tree-tops glistening like moon rays on the whispering leaves.
The longer Cyril stayed there gazing around the cabin that was filled with things Nettie herself had helped him to make, the stronger grew his hope and faith. A new exhilaration suddenly possessed him, making him feel that life was worth living again. He looked with a new warmth and kindness upon the world, and not even the slowly gathering storm that darkened the March day could quell his mounting spirits.
He was whistling and bustling about the shack when he heard a hanging upon the door, and opened the door to find Dr. McDermott standing there. He greeted his old friend with unaffected delight, for the doctor was always associated in his thoughts with Nettie, whom he had brought into the world in the best day's work he ever accomplished, so thought Cyril.
"Hello, doc. Gee, it's great to see your good old mug again. How'd you know I was back? How're you?"
But the old doctor was scowling at him like an angry bulldog, underlip thrust out, and his face puckered into lines of unmistakable disapproval; worse still, he was pointedly refusing Cyril's proffered handshake.