"I'll give you one, Dick. You'll be doing me a kindness to take it and keep it, old chap, for I am a regular duffer with edged tools."
He found the knife and spent ten minutes in forcing it upon the trapper as a gift. At last Dick accepted it.
"But I tell you right now, Mr. Rayton," he said, "I'll git mad if you try givin' me a horse, or a cow, or your farm. You've already give me something of pretty near everything you own. It ain't right."
Rayton laughed. Then his face became suddenly very grave.
"See here, Dick, I've something serious to say to you," he said. "Something I've been worrying over for the last day or two. You've always been honest with me—the soul of honesty—so I must be honest with you."
"What have I bin doin'?" asked the trapper uneasily.
"You? Oh, you haven't done anything that you shouldn't, old man. I am thinking of myself. You told me, a little while ago, that you were—ah—very fond of Miss Harley. But you told me in such a way, old man, as to lead me to think that—that you didn't believe yourself to have—much chance—in the quarter."
"That's right, Mr. Rayton," replied the trapper frankly. "I knew there wasn't any chance for me, and I know it still. I said that you was the kind of man she'd ought to marry, some day. I'm a good trapper, and I try to be an honest friend to them as act friendly to me; but I'm just a tough, ignorant bushwhacker. She ain't my kind—nor David Marsh's kind—and neither is Jim. She's more like you and Mr. Banks."
Rayton blushed deeply.
"My dear chap, you must not talk like that," he said. "You live in the bush, of course, but so do I, and so do all of us. But—but what I want to say, Dick, is this: I am—I am in love with Miss Harley!"