“I do not wish to pursue an unpleasant subject, Miss Vane, but if you are still hoping for Burton’s return let me urge you to disillusion yourself. He will not return. If you care for him you should hope that he will not return. Return can mean only one thing to him, and he must know that. And he will not be brought back. I may say that I used my influence with the Department to have no effort made to apprehend him. He will not come back.”
“I think he will come back.”
“I will wager anything—I would lay any odds, that he will not come back. Listen—I lay you a wager. If Burton voluntarily returns to trial I promise never to press this question again. If he does not your answer is to be ‘Yes.’ Have you faith enough in Burton for that?”
For a moment she hesitated.
“You are not so sure of him,” he urged.
“Yes, I am sure of him.”
“Then our wager is placed, and bound by the honour of each,” he cried, exultantly.
[CHAPTER XVI—KIT MCKAY]
| “Ned McCann owned the Double Star ’way back in the early days; He had come out here with a sickly wife and a kid he hoped to raise Where the climate suited the feeble-lunged, but life was scarce at its brim, Till a little mound by a prairie hill held half of the world for him; And his double love would have spoiled the child had she been like me or you, But her only thought was for her dad and the mother she scarcely knew.” Prairie Born. |
The sun was setting on their second day’s drive when Burton and Mr. McKay crested a ridge behind which lay the farmer’s buildings and his sweeping fields of grain, already glowing yellowish in the long bars of amber sunlight that bathed their gently rustling mass. Before them stretched the prairie trail, down a gentle incline until it lost itself in a little gulley; there was the plain bald scar where it climbed out at the other side, and immediately beyond was the farmhouse. Burton’s eyes drank in the magnitude and peace of the scene with a sense that here at least was a haven where his troubles might not follow him. And he mentally blessed the old farmer, for whom he already felt a strong friendship.