"I haven't played the game fair with you two," he said, "and I want to say so now. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I played the wrong game. Twenty-five years have proved it was the wrong game. Now, without a penny, I can start just where I started twenty-five years ago. The only difference is that I am an old man instead of a young one. I'm going to take another homestead and start again, at the right game, if Mary will start with me."
She put her hand in his, and her eyes were bright again with the fire of youth. "You know there is only one answer, John," she whispered.
Harris called Travers over from the group of men.
"There's one thing more," he continued. "When I started I had only a wife to keep, and I don't intend to take any bigger responsibility now. Allan will be having a homestead of his own. Jim Travers, I am speaking to you! I owe you an apology for some things and an explanation for some things, but I'm going to square the debt with the only gift I have left."
The light breeze tossed the hair of Beulah's uncovered head, and the light of love and health glowed in her face and thrilled through the fine symmetry of her figure.
"Take her, Jim," he said.
"She is a godly gift," said the young man reverently.
"You think so now," said her father. "You know nothing about it. In twenty-five years you will know just how great a gift she is—or she will not be worthy of her mother."
Harris and his wife were gazing with unseeing eyes into the mountains when Arthurs handed them a letter. "It came in the mail which the boys brought out this morning," he said, "and I forgot all about it until this minute."
It was from Bradshaw. Harris opened it indifferently, but the first few lines aroused his interest, and he read it eagerly to the end.