A jolly party set off for Velpen Sunday morning. Hank Bruebacher had remained over night on purpose to escort them to the river in his ’bus. It had been caught on the wrong side. The channel had closed over about the middle of the week. The ice had been very thin at first; there had been no drop of the thermometer, but a gradual lowering night after night had at last made men deem it safe to cross on foot. A rumor to this effect had drifted in to the tired jurors hanging around and killing time, waiting to be called. Sunday in Kemah was impossible—to many. Besides, they had had a week of it. They were sure of a good dinner at Velpen, where there had been no such fearful inroads on the supplies, and the base of whose supplies, moreover, was not cut off as it was at Kemah by the closing of the river, which was not yet solid enough for traffic. That consideration held weight with many. Saloon service was a little better, and that, too, had its votaries. Business appointments actuated Gordon and perhaps a few others. Ennui pure and simple moved the Court and the Court’s assistant.  
It was about ten in the morning. It was frosty, but bright, and the little cold snap bade fair to die prematurely. It surely was wonderful weather for South Dakota.
 
“Where is Mary?” asked the Judge, as Louise came lightly down the stairs, ready to put on her gloves.
 
“She went out to the Whites’ an hour or so ago—to do the week’s washing, I suspect. Mr. Langford took her out.”
 
“Louise! On Sunday!” Even the tolerant Judge was shocked.
 
“It’s true, Uncle Hammond,” persisted Louise, earnestly.
 
She wore a modish hat that was immensely becoming, and looked charming. Gordon stood at the worn, wooden steps, hat off, despite the nipping air, waiting to assist her to the place the gallant Hank had reserved for her.
 
He sat down at her right, Judge Dale at her left. The jurymen filled the other places rapidly. The heavy wagon lurched forward. The road was good; there had been no snows or thaws. Now was Hank in his element. It is very probable that he was the most unreservedly contented man in seven States that fair Sunday morning—always excepting Munson of the Three Bars. A few straggling buckboards and horsemen brought up the rear. Judge Dale, taking to himself as much room as it was possible to confiscate with elbows slyly pressed outward chickenwing-wise, fished out his newspaper leisurely, leaned over Gordon to say in a matter-of-fact voice, “Just amuse Louise for a little while, will you, Dick, while I glance at the news; you won’t have to play, just talk,—she likes to talk,” and buried himself in the folds of the jiggling paper; much jiggled because Hank had no intention of permitting any vehicle to pass the outfit of which the Judge was passenger while he, Hank Bruebacher, held the reins. He was an authority of the road, and as such, he refused to be passed by anything on wheels.
 
The rattle of the wagon drowned all coherent conversation. The Judge’s outspread arms had forced Louise very close to her neighbor on the right, who had the instructions to keep her amused, but even then he must bend his head if he were to obey orders strictly and—talk. He chose to obey. Last night, he had been worn out with the strain of the week; he had not been able to forget things. To-day,—well, to-day was to-day.
 
“Are you going to hear the bishop?” asked Louise. It was a little hard to make conversation when every time one lifted one’s eyes one found one’s self so startlingly close to a man’s fine face.
 
“Surely!” responded Gordon. “An incomparable scholar—an indefatigable workman—truest of saints.” There was grave reverence in his lowered voice.
 
“You know him well?”
 
“Yes. I see him often in his Indian mission work. He is one of the best friends I have.”
 
The river gleamed with a frozen deadness alongside. The horses’ hoofs pounded rhythmically over the hardened road. Opposite, a man who had evidently found saloon service in Kemah pretty good, but who doubtless would put himself in a position to make comparisons as soon as ever his unsteady feet could carry him there, began to sing a rollicking melody in a maudlin falsetto.
 
“Shut up!” One of the men nudged him roughly.
 
“Right you are,” said the singer, pleasantly, whose name was Lawson. “It is not seemly that we lift up our voices in worldly melody on this holy day and—in the presence of a lady,” with an elaborate bow and a vacant grin that made Louise shrink closer to the Judge. “I suggest we all join in a sacred song.” He followed up his own suggestion with a discordant burst of “Yes, we will gather at the river.”
 
“He means the kind o’ rivers they have in the ‘Place around the Corner,’” volunteered Hank, turning around with a knowing wink. “They have rivers there—plenty of ’em—only none of ’em ever saw water.”
 
“I tell you, shut up,” whispered the man who had first chided. “Can’t you see there’s a lady present? No more monkey-shines or we’ll oust you. Hear?”
 
“I bow to the demands of the lady,” said Lawson, subsiding with happy gallantry.
 
“You have many ‘best friends’ for a man who boasted not so long ago that he stood alone in the cow country,” said Louise, resuming the interrupted conversation with Gordon.
 
“He is one of the fingers,” retorted Gordon. “I confessed to one hand, you will remember.”
 
“Let me see,” said Louise, musingly. She began counting on her own daintily gloved hand.
 
“Mrs. Higgins is the thumb, you said?” questioningly.
 
“Yes.”
 
“Mr. Langford is the first finger, of course?”
 
“Of course.”
 
“And Uncle Hammond is the middle finger?”
 
“You have said it.”
 
“And the bishop is the third finger?”
 
“He surely is.”
 
“And—and—Mary is the next?”
 
“Sorceress! You have guessed all right.”
 
“Then where am I?” she challenged, half in earnest, half in fun. “You might have left at least the little finger for me.”
 
He laughed under his breath—an unsteady sort of laugh, as if something had knocked at his habitual self control. There was only one answer to that gay, mocking challenge—only one—and that he could not give. He forgot for a little while that there were other people in the wagon. The poor babbling, grinning man across the way was not the only drunken man therein. Only one answer, and that to draw the form closer—closer to him—against his heart—for there was where she belonged. Fingers? What did he care for fingers now? He wanted to lay his face down against her soft hair—it was so perilously near. If only he might win in his fight! But even so, what would it matter? What could there ever be for her in this cruel, alien land? She had been so kindly and lovingly nurtured. In her heart nestled the home call—for all time. She was bound in its meshes. They would draw her sooner or later to her sure and inevitable destiny. And what was there for him elsewhere—after all these years? Kismet. He drew a long breath.
 
“I’m a poor maverick, I suppose, marked with no man’s friendship. But you see I’m learning the language of the brotherhood. Why don’t you compliment me on my adaptability?”
 
She looked up smilingly. She was hurt, but he should never know it. And he, because of the pain in him, answered almost roughly:
 
“It is not a language for you to learn. You will never learn. Quit trying. You are not like us.”
 
She, because she did not understand, felt the old homesick choking in her throat, and remembered with a reminiscent shudder of the first awful time she had spun along that road. Everybody seemed to spin in this strange land. She felt herself longing for the fat, lazy, old jogging horses of her country home. Horses couldn’t hurry there because the hills were too many and the roads too heavy. These lean, shaggy, range-bred horses were diabolical in their predilection for going. Hank’s surely were no exception to the rule. He pulled them up with a grand flourish at the edge of the steep incline leading directly upon the pontoon that bridged the narrowed river on the Kemah side of the island, and they stopped dead still with the cleanness worthy of cow ponies. The suddenness of the halt precipitated them all into a general mix-up. Gordon had braced himself for the shock, but Louise was wholly unprepared. She was thrown violently against him. The contact paled his face. The soft hair he had longed to caress in his madness brushed his cheek. He shivered.
 
“Oh!” cried Louise, laughing and blushing, “I wasn’t expecting that!”
 
Most of the men were already out and down on the bridge. A lone pedestrian was making his way across.
 
“All safe?” queried Judge Dale, as he came up.
 
“A little thin over the channel, but all saf............