“No!” cried Dan Anderson.  “Don’t ever say that of me.”

“Of course, I know folks is different,” went on Tom Osby, presently.  “They come from different places, and have lived different ways.  Me, I come from Georgy.  I never did have much chanct for edication, along of the war breakin’ out.  My folks was in the fightin’ some; and so I drifted here,”

“You came from Georgia?” asked Dan Anderson.  “I was born farther north.  I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart’s Desire.  The only real friends I ever had are here.

“Now,” he went on, “it’s because I feel that way, and because you’re going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next week to see if you can get a look at that ‘Annie Laurie’ woman—­it’s because of those things that I want to help you if I can.  And that’s the truth—­or something resemblin’ it, maybe.

“Now listen, Tom.  Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she’s not dead.  She was a Georgia girl herself—­Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she had naturally a wonderful voice.  She went to Paris and Italy to study long before I came out West.  She first sang in Milan, and her appearance was a big success.  She’s made thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“About how old is she?” asked Tom Osby.

“I should think about thirty-five,” said Dan Anderson.  “That is, countin’ years, and not experience.”

“I’m just about forty-five,” said Tom, “countin’ both.”

“Well, she came from Georgia—­”

“And so did I,” observed Tom Osby, casually.

Dan Anderson was troubled.  His horizon was wider than Tom Osby’s.

“It’s far, Tom,” said he; “it’s very far.”

“I everidge about twenty mile a day,” said Tom, not wholly understanding.  “I can make it in less’n a week.”

“Tom,” cried Dan Anderson, “don’t!”

But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a country which held real men.

“Do you know, Dan,” said he, “if I could just onct in my life hear that there song right out—­herself singin’, words and all—­fiddles, like enough; maybe a pianny, too—­if I could just hear that!  If I could just hear—­that!”

“Tom!”

They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke.  “There is some folks,” said he, “that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of the folks that can’t do things for keeps.  Some fellers has to just drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else common and useful—­world’s sort of fixed up that way, I reckon.  But folks that can do things for keeps—­I reckon they’re right proud, like.”

“Not if they really do the things that keep.  That sort ain’t proud,” said Dan Anderson.

“Now, I can just see her a-settin’ there,” went on the freighter.  “It sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around.”