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Rh "Now, honey, don't waste time. I want to get down to essentials. You're glad that I'm going into the Force?"

"Yes. Yes; I think so. But it will take"

"I know, honey. I know it's not all ice-cream, sodas, and limelight effects. I know it's not an easy life in any one way. Tempest rubbed that into me—salted it in. But I have decided on it, and I will stick to it."

Jennifer was thinking of one man of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, and of the want of ease his life had given him.

"Did—did anyone else advise it?" she asked.

"Well—I told you what Dick Heriot said. But I didn't tell you why. Anyway, it's a life where a man has to be a man or get out. And that's attractive, you know."

"Oh, you boy! Is that all?"

"No." Slicker poked the fire until the sparks flew, and he did not look at her. "No. I've been rotting since you left, Jennifer. I had to take up something—or follow Ogilvie's trail."

"Slicker! Oh, Slicker!" Jennifer saw the boy face and figure through a sudden mist of tears. "I never thought of that for you."

"I never thought of it for myself. But it is in the air up there, some way. You know how it is, Jennifer. Nothing to do but hang around the hotel and smoke and yarn and drink. And when you were gone—well, I told you Heriot pulled me up that day of the fire. He didn't say much. But, my land, he makes a little go a long way. I wish he wasn't really such a brute."

"Perhaps if you—if you knew him better, dear." Jennifer's words were uncertain here, but Slicker's answer was not.

"D'you think I don't know him a hundred times better than you do, honey? Even if I could forgive him for what he did and said to you, I can't forgive him for what he's doing to Tempest."

Jennifer made the fire up before she asked:

"What is he doing to Mr. Tempest?"

"Well—you know how crazy poor old Tempest is over Grange's Andree? Heriot is cutting him out there, lock, stock and barrel. But he hasn't the honesty to let Tempest