The Man From The Bitter Roots

It dawned upon Bruce suddenly that he had been talking about himself--babbling for nearly an hour.

"Why haven't you stopped me?" he demanded, pausing in the middle of a sentence and coloring to his hair. "I've been prattling like an old soldier, telling war stories in a Home. What's got into me?"

Helen laughed aloud at his dismay.

"Honest," he assured her ruefully, "I never broke out like this before. And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is," he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, "there's some more money coming to you from Slim--I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great deal but--" he laid in her hand the bank-notes Sprudell had been obliged to give him in Bartlesville after having denied finding her.

Helen looked from the money to Bruce in surprised inquiry: "But Mr. Sprudell has already given me what Freddie left."

"Oh, this is another matter--a collection I made for him after Sprudell left," he replied glibly. It was considerable satisfaction to think that Sprudell had had to pay for his perfidy and she would benefit by it.

The last thing that Helen had expected to do was to cry, but the money meant so much to her just then; her relief was so great that the tears welled into her eyes. She bit her lip hard but they kept coming, and, mortified at such an exhibition, she laid her arm on the back of the worn plush sofa and hid her face.

Tears, however embarrassing, have a way of breaking down barriers and Bruce impulsively took in his the other hand that lay in her lap.

"What is it, Miss Dunbar? Won't you tell me? If you only knew how proud and happy I should be to have you talk to me frankly. You can't imagine how I've looked forward to being allowed to do something for you. It means everything to me--far more than to you."

Bruce remembered having seen his mother cry, through homesickness and loneliness, softly, uncomplainingly, as she went about her work in the ugly frame house back there on the bleak prairie. And he remembered the roars of rage in which Peroxide Louise had voiced her jealousy. But he had seen few women cry, and now he was so sorry for her that it hurt him--he felt as though someone had laid a hand upon his heart and squeezed it.