Part 63

"I don't know, not yet."

"Perhaps you marry me, mam'selle? I ask you once--I haf not change my mind."

She stared at him with a kind of terror in her eyes.

Was this her way out! Was this the place that somewhere in the world she had declared defiantly was meant for her? Was it the purpose of the Fates to crowd her down and out--until she was glad to fill it--a punishment for her ambitions--for daring to believe she was intended for some other life than this?

Upon that previous occasion when the old Frenchman had made her the offer of marriage which had seemed so grotesque and impossible at the time, he had asserted in his pique, "You might be glad to marry old Edouard Dubois some day," and she had turned her back upon him in light contempt--now she was, not glad, she could never be that, but grateful.

"But I--don't love you." Her voice sounded strained and hoarse.

"Zat question I did not ask you--I ask you will you marry me?" He did not wait for an answer, but went on persuasively, yet stating the bald and hopeless facts that seemed so crushing to her youth and inexperience. "You have no parent--no home, Mees Teesdale; you have no money and not so many friend in Crowheart. You marry me and all is change. You have good home and many friends, because," he chuckled shrewdly, "when I die you have thirty thousand sheep. Plenty sheep, plenty friends, my girl. How you like be the richest woman in this big county, mam'selle?"

The girl was listening, that was something; and she was thinking hard.

Money! how they all harped upon it!--when she had thought the most important thing in the world was love. Even Ogden Van Lennop she remembered had called it the great essential and now she saw that old Edouard Dubois who had lived for seventy years regarded it in a wholly reverent light.

"When you marry me you have no more worry, no more trouble, no more tears."

Her lips moved; she was repeating to herself--

"No more worry, no more trouble, no more tears."

She was bewildered with the problems which confronted her, frightened by the overwhelming odds against her, tired of thinking, sick to death of the humiliation of her position. She stopped the guttural, wheedling voice with a quick, vehement gesture.

"Give me time to think--give me until to-morrow morning."

"What time to-morrow morning?"

"At ten o'clock,"--there was desperation in her face--"at ten to-morrow I will tell you 'yes' or 'no.'"

She was clutching at a straw, clinging to a faint hope which had not entirely deserted her: she might yet get a letter from Van Lennop, just a line to let her know that he cared enough to send it; and if it came, a single sentence, she knew well enough what her answer to Dubois would be.

"Until to-morrow." The old Frenchman bowed low in clumsy and unaccustomed politeness, but gloating satisfaction shone from his deep-set eyes, small and hard as two gray marbles.

AN UNFORTUNATE AFFAIR

Billy Duncan was in a bad way, so it was reported to the men upon the works, and the men to show their sympathy and liking for the fair-haired, happy-go-lucky Billy Duncan made up a purse of $90 and sent it to him by Dan Treu, the big deputy-sheriff, who also was Billy Duncan's friend.

"It'll buy fruit for the kid, something to read, and a special nurse if he needs one," they told the deputy and they gave the money with the warmest of good wishes.

Dan Treu took their gift to the hospital, and Billy Duncan burst into tears when he saw him.

"Oh, come, come! Buck up, Billy, you're goin' to pull through all right."

"Dan! Dan! Take me out of here--take me away! Quick!"

The deputy looked his surprise.

"What's the matter, Billy? What's wrong?"

"Everything's wrong, Dan, everything!" His voice was shrill in his weakness. "I'm goin' to croak if you don't get me out of here!"

Dan Treu bent over him and patted his shoulder as he would have comforted a child.