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Rh Ducane acquiesced sullenly. But it seemed to Dick that he snatched at this way of escape. Dick bade him good-night blandly.

"I'll come over with de Choiseaux," he said. "And I'll ask Mrs. Ducane to tell me how you've spent the night. You mustn't let those nerves get any more bold, you know." He left Ducane groping with the hint behind this, and went down the passage to get his hat. In the open doorway Jennifer came to him, and under the pale starlight she looked very small and frail.

"Thank you," she said, almost inaudibly. "But I hope that it will never be necessary for you to do this any more."

He had to lighten that note of tragedy in her voice before he could think of anything else.

"Why, it was nothing," he said. "When a man gets a bad attack of nerves a few plain words from another man soon help to make him 'see things straight. I am going to bring de Choiseaux over in the morning. Ducane has consented to take a tonic. You'll see that he'll soon be all right again. But he'll have to knock off his smoking."

Both knew well that it was very much more than nothing. But she said only:

"How very kind you always are to me."

Dick looked down at her smiling. He was wondering if she would say this to him in the days that were coming.

"That virtue brings its own reward in this case," he said, and rode away into the night.

A week later Slicker tottered in at the barrack-gate, white-faced.

"Dick, I've found him," he gasped. "I've found Ogilvie."

Dick led him into the little office and shut the door.

"Where?" he said. "Take your time—and take this first."

Slicker swallowed a small nip from Dick's flask, and shuddered. "He's at the bottom of that coulée a couple of hundred yards from the Mission trail. I didn't go