“Yes, he would.  Consider.  He must have taken time to prepare for that terrible journey.  How else could he have carried it through?” She leaned forward a little, compelling his glance, trying to reason down the tragedy in his face.

“How can you blame yourself?” she finished brokenly.  “You must not.  I will not—­let you.”

“Thank you for saying that.”  Tisdale’s rugged features worked.  He laid his hand for an instant over hers.  “If any one in the world can set me right with myself, it is you.”

After that they both were silent.  They began to round the bold promontory at the end of the Wenatchee range; the Badger loomed on the rim of the desert, then Old Baldy seemed to swing his sheer front like an opened portal to let the blue flood of the Columbia through.  The interest crept back to her face.  Between them and those guardian peaks a steel bridge, fine as a spider web, was etched on the river, then a first orchard broke the areas of sage, the rows of young trees radiating from a small, new dwelling, like a geometrical pattern.  Finally she said:  “I would like to know a little more about Mrs. Barbour.  Did you ever see her again, Mr. Tisdale?  Or the child?”

“Oh, yes.  I made it a point the next winter, when I was in Washington, to run down into Virginia and look them up.  And I have always kept in touch with them.  She sends me new pictures of the boy every year.  He keeps her busy.  He was a rugged little chap at the start, did his best to grow, and bright!”—­Tisdale paused, shaking his head, while the humorous lines deepened—­“But he had to be vigorous to carry the name she gave him.  Did I tell you it was Weatherbee Tisdale?  Think of shouldering the names of two full-sized men on that atom.  But she picked a nice diminutive out of it—­ ‘Bee.’

“It was a great christening party,” he went on reminiscently.  “She arranged it when she passed through Seattle and had several hours to wait for her train.  The ceremony was at Trinity, that stone church on the first hill, and the Bishop of Alaska, who was waiting too, officiated.  I was in town at the time, getting my outfit together for another season in the north, but Weatherbee had to assume his responsibilities by proxy.”

“Do you mean David Weatherbee was the child’s godfather?”

“One of them, yes.”  Tisdale paused, and his brows clouded.  “I wish the boy had been his own.  That would have been his salvation.  If David Weatherbee had had a son, he would be here with us now, to-day.”

Miss Armitage was silent.  She looked off up the unfolding watercourse, and the great weariness Tisdale had noticed that hour before dawn settled again on her face.

He laid his hand on the reins.  “You are tired out,” he said.  “Come, give the lines to me.  You’ve deceived me with all that fine show of spirits, but I’ve been selfish, or I must have seen.  The truth is, I’ve been humoring this hand.”