When Stanford Manning had asked, “What will you do when your game of Patches is played out?” he had said that the man whom they had known in the old days was dead.  Would this new man also die?  Deliberately the man turned about and started back the way he had come.

In their honeymoon camp, that evening, when the only light in the sky was the light of the stars, and the camp fire’s ruddy flames made weird shadows come and go in the little glade, Helen, lying in the hammock, and Stanford, sitting near, talked of their old friend Lawrence Knight.  But as they talked they did not know that a lonely horseman had stopped on the other side of the low ridge, and leaving his horse, had crept carefully through the brush, to a point on the brow of the hill, from which he could look down into the camp.

From where he lay in the darkness, the man could see against the camp fire’s light the two, where the hammock was swung under the trees.  He could hear the low murmur of their voices, with now and then a laugh.  But it was always the man who laughed, for there was little mirth in Helen’s heart that night.  Then he saw Stanford go into the tent and return again to the hammock; and soon there came floating up to him the sweet, plaintive music of Helen’s guitar, and then her voice, full and low, with a wealth of womanhood in every tone, as she sang a love song to her mate.  Later, when the dancing flames of the camp fire had fallen to a dull red glow, he saw them go arm in arm into their tent.  Then all was still.  The red glow of the fire dimmed to a spark, and darkness drew close about the scene.  But even in the darkness the man could still see, under the wide, sheltering arms of the trees, a lighter spot—­the white tent.

“Gethsemane,” said the Dean to me once, when our talk had ranged wide and touched upon many things, “Gethsemane ain’t no place; it’s somethin’ that happens.  Whenever a man goes up against himself, right there is where Gethsemane is.  And right there, too, is sure to be a fight.  A man may not always know about it at the time; he may be too busy fightin’ to understand just what it all means; but he’ll know about it afterwards—­No matter which side of him wins, he’ll know afterwards that it was the one big fight of his life.”

CHAPTER XIV.

AT MINT SPRING.

When those days at Prescott were over, and Mr. and Mrs. Manning had left for their camp in Granite Basin, Kitty Reid returned to Williamson Valley reluctantly.  She felt that with Phil definitely out of her life the last interest that bound her to the scenes of her girlhood was broken.  Before many weeks the ranch would be sold.  A Prescott agent had opened negotiations for an eastern client who would soon be out to look over the property; and Mr. Reid felt, from all that the agent had said, that the sale was assured.  In the meantime Kitty would wait as patiently as she could.  To help her, there would be Helen’s visit, and there was her friendship with Professor Parkhill.  It was not strange, considering all the circumstances, that the young woman should give her time more generously than ever to the only person in the neighborhood, except Patches, perhaps, who she felt could understand and appreciate her desires for that higher life of which even her own parents were ignorant.