unfortunate and tragic, and so had the love of the other three.
Down below Minook, Colonel Walthstone and Dartworthy had fought
it out. Dartworthy had been killed. A bullet through the
Colonel's lungs had so weakened him that he died of pneumonia the
following spring. And the Colonel's wife had no one left alive
on earth to love.

And then there was Freda, drowning herself in the running
mush-ice because of some man on the other side of the world, and
hating him, Daylight, because he had happened along and pulled
her out of the mush-ice and back to life. And the Virgin....
The old memories frightened him. If this love-germ gripped him
good and hard, and if Dede wouldn't have him, it might be almost
as bad as being gouged out of all he had by Dowsett, Letton, and
Guggenhammer. Had his nascent desire for Dede been less, he
might well have been frightened out of all thought of her. As it
was, he found consolation in the thought that some love affairs
did come out right. And for all he knew, maybe Luck had stacked
the cards for him to win. Some men were born lucky, lived lucky
all their days, and died lucky. Perhaps, too, he was such a man,
a born luck-pup who could not lose.

Sunday came, and Bob, out in the Piedmont hills, behaved like an
angel. His goodness, at times, was of the spirited prancing
order, but otherwise he was a lamb. Daylight, with doubled quirt
ready in his right hand, ached for a whirl, just one whirl, which
Bob, with an excellence of conduct that was tantalizing, refused
to perform. But no Dede did Daylight encounter. He vainly
circled about among the hill roads and in the afternoon took the
steep grade over the divide of the second range and dropped into