“I know.  I know.  If I had been a man, it would have been different.  I should have restored it; I should have worked, fought to buy back every acre.  But you saw old Jacinta and Carlos?  It was recorded in the title they should be allowed to stay there and have the use of the old home garden as long as they lived.  My mother insisted on that.”

They had reached the level and walked on by the house towards the solitary pine tree on the rim of the bench.  After a moment he said:  “Now Dave’s project is running in good shape, there isn’t much left for me to do, my, no, except see the statue set up in the park.”

“I wanted to ask you about that, Mr. Banks; we passed the place on the way to the bungalow.  It was beautiful.  I presume you have selected a woman’s figure—­a lovely Ceres or Aphrodite?”

“No, ma’am,” responded Banks a little sharply.  “It’s a full-sized man.  Full-sized and some over, what the sculptor who made it calls heroic; and it’s a good likeness of Dave Weatherbee.”

They had reached the pine tree, and she put out her hand to steady herself on the bole.  “I understand,” she said slowly.  “It was a beautiful—­ tribute.”

“It looks pretty nice,” corroborated the prospector.  “There was a mighty good photograph of Dave a young fellow on a Yukon steamer gave me once, to go by.  He was standing on a low bluff, with his head up, looking off like a young elk, when the boat pulled out, and the camera man snapped him.  It was the day we quit the partner lay, and I was going down-stream, and he was starting for the headwaters of the Susitna.  Tisdale told me about a man who had done first-class work in New York, and I sent that picture with a check for a starter on my order.  I wrote him the price wasn’t cutting any figure with me; what I wanted was the best he could do and to have it delivered by the fifteenth of March.  And he did; he had it done on time; and he said it was his best work.  It’s waiting down in Weatherbee now.  Hollis thought likely I better leave it to you whether to have the burying with the statue down in the park, or up here, somewhere, on Dave’s own ground.”

“Do you mean,” she asked, and her voice almost failed, “you have brought—­ David—­home?”

Banks nodded.  “It was cold for him wintering up there in the Alaska snow.”

“Oh, I know.  I’ve thought about—­that.  I should have done—­as you have—­ had I been able.”

After a moment she said:  “What is there I can say to you?  I did not know there were such men in the world until I knew you and Hollis Tisdale.  Of course you believed, as he did, that I was necessary to round out David’s project.  That is why, when it was successfully completed, you forfeited the bonus and all the investment.  I may never be able to fully refund you but—­shall do my best.  And this other—­too.  Mr. Banks, was that Mr. Tisdale’s suggestion?  Did he share that—­expense—­with you?”

“No, ma’am, he let me have that chance when we talked it over.  I had to get even with him on the project.”