The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1916-06-23

to label Amy sweetest and mos
seraphic of diminutives."
III you don't like my name" sh,
began, and then she went off at an
other tangent. please tell me why
am collection of contradictions
Brouillard's gaze went past tn,
shapely little figure in the string ham
mock to lose itself in the far Timan
yoni distances.
you are q bundle of surprises" he
said, letting the musing thought sliI
into speech. What can you possibly
know about my thoughts?"
She made a funny little grimace a,
him. 1T was contradictions a mo
ment ago and now it is surprises.
Which reminds me, you haven't told
| me why am a collection"
"Oh, can catalogue them If you
push me to it. One minute you are
the Madonna lady that can't recall
calm, reposeful, truthful, and all that
you know-so truthful that those child
like eyes of yours would make slut
tering imbecile of the man who should
come to you with lie in his mouth.
And the next minute?"
1.-THE next minute you are WITCH
laughing at the mans little weak
nesses, putting your finger on them as
accurately as If you could read his
soul, holding them up to your ridicule
and-what's much worse-to his own.
At such times your insight, or what
ever you choose to call it, is enough
to give man fit of seeing things
Her laugh was like a schoolgirls,
light-hearted, ringing, deliciously unre-
strained.
What q pictured" she commented.
And then: II can draw a better one
of you, Monsieur Victor de Brouil-
lard"
do it," he dared.
VERY well, then: Once upon time
it was good while ago, I'm afraid
you were a very upright young man.
You would cheerfully have died for a
principle in those days, and you would
have allowed the enemy to cut you up
into cunning little inch cubes before
you would have admitted that any pig
con was ever made to be plucked."
He was smiling mirthlessly, with the
black mustaches taking the sardonic
upcurve.
Then what happened"
Zone Of two things, or maybe both
of them. You were pushed out into
the life race with some sort Of a
handicap. 1 don't know what it was
or is. Is that true?"
He nodded gravely. ut is all true
enough. You haven't added anything
more than graceful little touch here
and there. Who has been telling you
all these things about me? Not
Grizzy?"
mo, not Murray Grislow; it was the
man you think you know best in all
the worldwide is also probably the
one you know the least-yourself."
Good heavens! Am 1 really such a
transparent egoist as all that?"
"All men are egoists," she answered
calmly. I'm some the ego is sound
and clear-eyed and strong; in others
1t is weak-in the same way that pas
sion is weak; it will sacrifice all it has
or hopes to have in some sudden fury
Of self-assertion."
She sat up and put her hands to her
hair, and he was free to look away,
down upon the great ditch where the
endless chain of concrete buckets
added to the deep and widespread
foundations of the dam. Across the |
liver group of hidden sawmills sang |
heir raucous song. In the middle dis |
.ance the camp-town city spread |
is roughly indicated streets over the |
valley level, the tall chimney stacks |
If the new cement plant were rising, |
ind from the quarries beyond the
liant the dull thunder of the blasts
lrifted up.
This was not BrouiIlard's first VISIT
o the cabin on the Massingale claim
" many. In the earliest stages of the
alley activities Smith, the Buckskin
attleman, had been Amy Massingale's
scort to the reclamation camp-"just
couple o. lockers" in Smiths phrase
and the unconventional attitudes
ad done the rest. From that day for
Yard the young woman had Hospitality
pened her door to Brouillard and his
ssistants, and any member OF the
orps, from Leshington the morose,
Tho commonly came to sit in solemn
Hence on the porch step, to Griffith,
rho had lost his youthful heart to
Hiss Massingale on his first visit, was
-elcome.
~ CAAPTEP VII MNil