almost unbelievingly.  Back and forth, back and forth went the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved, paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a silhouette looking out over the desolate town.  Watching, Landor shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  Once he cleared his throat as if to speak.  An instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark absolutely, and words would not come.  Reaching over to the desk he took up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.

As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat.  His face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more than normally.

“I feel I owe you an apology,” he said swiftly.  “In a way we’ve been friends, and as you say, it’s not a big thing you ask of me; but nevertheless I can’t grant it.  Please don’t ask me.”

The hat in Landor’s hands became still, significantly still.

“I admit I don’t understand,” he accepted, “but of course if you feel that way, I shall not ask you again.”  Unconsciously a trace of the former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily.  “I think I’d better be going.”  His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.  “Mary’ll be dying to give me the details.”

Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.  Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.

“I feel that I owe you an explanation as well,” he said repressedly.  “Would you like to hear?”

“Yes—­if you don’t mind.  If you’d prefer not to, however—­”

“No, I’d rather you—­understood than to go that way.”  The doctor cleared his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch.  “We all have our skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose.  At least I have mine, and it keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish—­” He caught himself, met his companion’s questioning look fairly.  “Haven’t you wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?” he queried suddenly.  “You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I don’t have a case a week.  Did it never occur to you that there was something peculiar about it all?”

“Peculiar?” The hat in the rancher’s hand started revolving again.  He had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a vague sense of commiseration—­an attitude very similar to that with which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be another, a sinister meaning—.

“If it hasn’t occurred to you before, doesn’t it seem peculiar, now that you consider it?” The question came swiftly, tensely, with a significance there was no misunderstanding.  “Tell me, please.”

“Yes, perhaps; but—­”