Freckles passed the second guard without seeing him, and hurried to the Boss.  He took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and stood silent under the eyes of McLean.

The Boss was dumbfounded.  Mrs. Duncan had led him to expect that he would find a change in Freckles, but this was almost deathly.  The fact was apparent that the boy scarcely knew what he was doing.  His eyes had a glazed, far-sighted appearance, that wrung the heart of the man who loved him.  Without a thought of preliminaries, McLean leaned in the saddle and drew Freckles to him.

“My poor lad!” he said.  “My poor, dear lad! tell me, and we will try to right it!”

Freckles had twisted his fingers in Nellie’s mane.  At the kind words his face dropped on McLean’s thigh and he shook with a nervous chill.  McLean gathered him closer and waited.

When the guard came with the otter, McLean without a word motioned him to lay it down and leave them.

“Freckles,” said McLean at last, “will you tell me, or must I set to work in the dark and try to find the trouble?”

“Oh, I want to tell you!  I must tell you, sir,” shuddered Freckles.  “I cannot be bearing it the day out alone.  I was coming to you when I remimbered you would be here.”

He lifted his face and gazed across the swale, with his jaws set firmly a minute, as if gathering his forces.  Then he spoke.

“It’s the Angel, sir,” he said.

Instinctively McLean’s grip on him tightened, and Freckles looked into the Boss’s face in wonder.

“I tried, the other day,” said Freckles, “and I couldn’t seem to make you see.  It’s only that there hasn’t been an hour, waking or sleeping, since the day she parted the bushes and looked into me room, that the face of her hasn’t been before me in all the tinderness, beauty, and mischief of it.  She talked to me friendly like.  She trusted me entirely to take right care of her.  She helped me with things about me books.  She traited me like I was born a gintleman, and shared with me as if I were of her own blood.  She walked the streets of the town with me before her friends with all the pride of a queen.  She forgot herself and didn’t mind the Bird Woman, and run big risks to help me out that first day, sir.  This last time she walked into that gang of murderers, took their leader, and twisted him to the will of her.  She outdone him and raced the life almost out of her trying to save me.

“Since I can remimber, whatever the thing was that happened to me in the beginning has been me curse.  I’ve been bitter, hard, and smarting under it hopelessly.  She came by, and found me voice, and put hope of life and success like other men into me in spite of it.”

Freckles held up his maimed arm.