“I want you to understand it good,” he went on, after the briefest pause.  “I can’t stand to live on in the house that Nancy and I built up.  Every room is haunted by her.  By her happy laugh, and by memories of the hours we sat and talked of the boy-child we’d both set our hearts on.  I just can’t do it without going stark, staring, raving mad.  I can’t.”

“That’s how I figgered.  I’ve watched it in you, Les.  Tell me the rest.”

Bat chewed steadily.  It was a safety-valve for his feelings.

“The rest?” Standing turned to gaze out at the house across the water.  “If it weren’t for you, Bat, I’d close right down.  I’d leave everything standing and—­get out,” he went on slowly.  “The whole thing’s a nightmare.  Look at it.  Look around.  The forests of soft wood.  The township we’ve set up.  The harnessed water power.  That—­that house of mine.  It’s all nightmare, and I don’t want it.  I’m afraid.  I’m scared to death of it.”

Bat moved away from the stump he had been propped against.  He passed across to the edge of the ledge and stood gazing down on the scenes below.

“You needn’t worry for me,” he said.  “It don’t matter a cuss where or how I hustle my dry hash.  I was born that way.  Fix things the way you feel.  Cut me right out.”

The man’s generosity was a simple expression of his rugged nature.  His love of that great work below him, in the creation of which he had taken so great a part, was nothing to him at that moment.  He was concerned only for the man, who had held out a succouring hand, and led him, in his darkest moments, to safety and prosperity.

Standing shook his head at the broad back squared against the grey, wintry sky.

“I didn’t mean it that way, old friend,” he said.

Bat swung around.  His grey eyes were wide.  His face seemed to have softened out of its usual harsh cast.

“But I do, Les,” he cried.  “You don’t need to figger a thing about me.  You’re hurt, boy.  You’re hurt mighty sore.  Cut me right out of your figgers, and do the things that’s goin’ to heal that sore.  If there’s a thing I can do to help you, why, I guess I’d be glad to know it.”

For a few moments Standing remained silent.  Perhaps he was pondering upon what he had to say.  Perhaps he was simply gaining time to suppress the emotions which the selflessness of the other had inspired.

“Here,” he cried at last, “I best tell you the whole story that’s in my mind.  I told you I’ve been figuring it out.  Well, it’s figured to the last decimal.  You think you know me.  Maybe you do.  Maybe you know only part of the things I know about myself.  If you knew them all I’d hate to think of the contempt you’d have to hand me.  You see, Bat, I’m a coward, a terrible moral coward.  Oh, I’m not scared of any man living when it comes to a fight.  But my mind’s full of ghosts and nightmares ready to jump at me with every doubt, every new effort where I can’t figure