He sat by the fire in the grip of a great despair.  He had lost ten years out of his life, his best years.  And he could not go back to where he had left off.  There was nothing to go back to but shame and remorse.  He looked at Bassett, lying by the fire, and tried to fit him into the situation.  Who was he, and why was he here?  Why had he ridden out at night alone, into unknown mountains, to find him?

As though his intent gaze had roused the sleeper, Bassett opened his eyes, at first drowsily, then wide awake.  He raised himself on his elbow and listened, as though for some far-off sound, and his face was strained and anxious.  But the night was silent, and he relaxed and slept again.

Something that had been forming itself in Dick’s mind suddenly crystallized into conviction.  He rose and walked to the edge of the mountain wall and stood there listening.  When he went back to the fire he felt in his pockets, found a small pad and pencil, and bending forward to catch the light, commenced to write...  At dawn Bassett wakened.  He was stiff and wretched, and he grunted as he moved.  He turned over and surveyed the small plateau.  It was empty, except for his horse, making its continuous, hopeless search for grass.

XXX

David was enjoying his holiday.  He lay in bed most of the morning, making the most of his one after-breakfast cigar and surrounded by newspaper and magazines.  He had made friends of the waiter who brought his breakfast, and of the little chambermaid who looked after his room, and such conversations as this would follow: 

“Well, Nellie,” he would say, “and did you go to the dance on the pier last night?”

“Oh, yes, doctor.”

“Your gentleman friend showed up all right, then?”

“Oh, yes.  He didn’t telephone because he was on a job out of town.”

Here perhaps David would lower his voice, for Lucy was never far away.

“Did you wear the flowers?”

“Yes, violets.  I put one away to remember you by.  It was funny at first.  I wouldn’t tell him who gave them to me.”

David would chuckle delightedly.

“That’s right,” he would say.  “Keep him guessing, the young rascal.  We men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!”

Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a man at home to look after him and his clothes.  David was enormously tickled.

“Well,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.  “I’ll tell you how I manage now, and then you’ll see.  When I want my trousers pressed I send them downstairs and then I wait in my bathrobe until they come back.  I’m a trifle better off for boots, but you’d have to knock Mike, my hired man, unconscious before he’d let you touch them.”

The valet grinned understandingly.

“Of course, there’s my nephew,” David went on, a little note of pride in his voice.  “He’s become engaged recently, and I notice he’s bought some clothes.  But still I don’t think even he will want anybody to hold his trousers while he gets into them.”