In his room at the hotel, Justin re-read that little memorandum book many times that night, and tried to accommodate his mind to its new environment. It was a difficult task. But at last the harshness he had felt toward Philip Davison went out of his soul. By degrees the submerged longing for a father’s love began to make itself felt. Philip Davison was his father; he did not doubt it now, though it seemed so strange. He had known from Ben and Lucy that Philip Davison had married twice. Ben was the child of the first marriage, and he the child of the second; and Ben was his half brother!

He saw resemblances now that he had never thought of. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he beheld blue eyes like those of Philip Davison. The forehead, the nose, the length of body and limb, were all, when thus studied, reminders of Philip Davison. Davison was florid of face, and Justin would probably be florid of face when he grew older, for his complexion was now of that type. Davison’s face was seamed with the marks of petulance and many outbursts of bad temper. Justin did not see any of those marks in his own smooth youthful countenance, but he knew that if he gave way to the fits of rage that swept over him at times with almost uncontrollable force, similar marks might set there the seal of their disapproval.

He was sure, however, that in many ways he was not like Philip Davison, even though he had as a boy so admired Davison; and he was glad to believe that these better traits he inherited from his mother. Though he did not know it, from his mother he had inherited the iron will which was manifesting itself. It had manifested itself in her when she refused to turn back to the home from which she had fled, but traveled on, weak and faint, until death claimed her. Her body had broken, but her will had stood firm to the last; and it had shown itself up to the end in her resolute manner of putting down in that little book her story for the benefit of the child she hoped would live after she had failed and passed on. To Ben, the child of the first marriage, had descended Philip Davison’s weaknesses and from his mother had come the slight stature and the pale face. Except in his mental characteristics Ben resembled his father less than Justin did.

Justin did not sleep that night. He knew that Philip Davison was in town, and he began to long to see him. This desire rose by and by as a swelling tide, bearing with it the years’ suppressed longing for a father’s love. As a child Justin had felt that inexpressible longing. It had moved within him when Clayton came first to the preacher’s house and he had pressed closely against Clayton’s unresponsive knees while exhibiting the little Bible in which his mother had written. Clayton had afterward satisfied that longing in a measure; but only the knowledge that the touch of the hand laid on him was really the touch of the hand of his own father could ever satisfy it fully.

So, through the years, that desire had yearned. Justin felt it again now, deeper than hunger, more anguishing than thirst. And it was not lessened by the feeling that Philip Davison might not wish to satisfy it, and perhaps could not. For circumstances stood now like a wall between this father and son; circumstances which were not the choice of either, any more than were the intuitions and the motives, selfish or otherwise, which led them. They had traveled by different paths, and they stood apart. Nevertheless, the yearning was there, deep, pathetic, and it seemed that it would never be appeased. Justin forgot that white indignation that at first had burned with furnace heat against Philip Davison. Love took its place. Philip Davison was his father!

As this desire gained in strength Justin made an effort to see his father. He decided that he would put that little diary into his father’s hands and be guided by the result. He surely could trust the better impulses of his own father! But he failed to find Davison. Fogg was absent, probably in attendance upon some all-night caucus, and Fogg was the only man likely to know where Davison could be found.

In the morning Justin discovered that Davison was temporarily absent, possibly out of town, but was expected at any moment. Fogg told him this, and observed that Justin showed a flushed, anxious face and had passed a sleepless night. Thereupon, remembering the promise of Sibyl Dudley, Fogg’s courage rose. He dared not question Justin, and Justin was non-committal. This new knowledge Justin wished to share first of all with his father.

In his room a brief note was brought to him. Lucy Davison was in the ladies’ parlor, and he went down to see her. She was seated by one of the windows that overlooked the noisy street. When she arose to meet him he saw that Sibyl had told her everything. There was sympathy and glad happiness, mingled with anxiety, in her manner. Her emotions tinted her cheeks and shadowed her brown eyes. Being a man, Justin did not note how she was dressed, except that it was very becomingly. Being a woman, she not only knew that she was entirely presentable herself, but saw every detail of his garb, from his well-polished shoes to the set of his collar. And she knew that he was clean and handsome. He had never questioned that she was the most beautiful woman, as to him she had been the most beautiful girl, in the world. Mary Jasper’s rose-leaf complexion and midnight hair were juvenile and inane beside the glory of Lucy Davison’s maturing womanhood.

“I am so glad, Justin, for you!” she said, and gave him her hands without reserve.

“And I am glad!” His voice choked, as he led her back to the window, where the rumble of the street noises stilled other sounds. “I am glad; though at first I couldn’t believe it, for it seemed so improbable. But I’m sure now it is true.”

She looked at him with fond admiration; at the straight firm features, at the handsome head with its crown of dark hair, at the tall muscular form, and into the clear blue eyes. And the blue eyes looked into the brown with love in their glance.

“And you’re almost related to me,” she said, sympathetically, “for you’re Ben’s half-brother!”

He smiled at her, and tried to assume a cheerful, even a jovial tone.

“I had thought of that, and of what a good thing it is that we’re not wholly related!”

“Let me see! What is our relationship now?”

“You are my sweetheart now, and will be my wife some day!”

She flushed attractively.

“I didn’t mean that. Let me see—Ben’s mother and my mother were sisters. So Ben and I are cousins.”

“And I am Ben’s half-brother, so you and I are half-cousins.”

He tried to speak in playful jest.

“No, we’re not related at all!”

“Then we shall have to become related, at an early day.”

“Uncle Philip is my uncle by marriage, but not my blood uncle. I am a cousin to Ben through my mother and his mother, who were sisters. So if I have no blood relationship with Uncle Philip, your father, I have none with you, for your mother was not related to me in any way.”

“And I say again I am glad of it.” He retained his jesting tone, though his mood was serious. “But if you marry me you are going to marry bad luck, for it seems that my name is Davison. You know the rhyme:

“You insist on joking about it. You know that Davison was not my father’s name, but only the name I took when Uncle Philip adopted me.”

“And that will break the bad luck spell!”

“Don’t you think it will?”

“I think it will; I know it will!” he declared.

“I came to see you about something, as well as to congratulate you and sympathize with you.”

“I tried to see you last night and failed.”

“Yes, I know. I heard about it this morning. I wish I could have seen you last night, but it is as well this morning. What I want to ask you is if you intend to vote against the cattlemen to-day?”

The cheery light died out of his eyes.

“I have thought it over, and have talked with Mrs. Dudley, and it seems to me it is your duty to consider the matter very carefully now that you know your relationship to Uncle Philip.”

A conservative by nature, and unconsciously influenced by the atmosphere of the Davison home, Lucy Davison had begun to fear that Justin was in the wrong. From that there was but a step to the conclusion that it was her duty to tell him so. She did not dream that she was but a pawn in the game which was being played by Sibyl Dudley.

Justin looked into the earnest brown eyes, and his voice was grave.

“If any one in the world could make me vote against my opinion it would be you. I’m not going to argue with you, but let me say just this. If I vote with the cattlemen, or refuse to vote at all, it will place me in the position of sustaining them in a rebellious defiance of the national government, in addition to upholding the unsheltered range, a question on which perhaps we could not agree. But the fences which they maintain on government lands are so clearly illegal that the government has in some instances ordered them down. The cattlemen hope by sending a senator to Washington to have that order rescinded and the entire matter dropped. They have fenced untaken public lands, and lands which settlers occupy, or wish to occupy, and they want to continue this without interruption from Washington.”

“You said you didn’t intend to argue!”

“I do not intend to argue. I’m simply going to ask if you think I would be justified in using my vote, or withholding it, to continue a practice that is in defiance of the orders of the land department, even to please my own father?”

“That order is not, as I understand, a legal enactment, and it might be changed,” she urged.

“It will be changed, no doubt, if the cattlemen win; but should it be changed, or withdrawn?”

“It seems to me that the settlers are doing well enough, and those fences aren’t injuring anybody.”

He was silent a moment, thinking.

“I want to please your Uncle Philip—my father—and I want to please you. I’ll admit that I have myself had some doubts on this question lately, serious doubts. Yet I cannot make myself think that I have not been in the right from the first. If I thought I was wrong I would change in a minute without regard to the consequences.”

“It wouldn’t be right for me to urge you to vote against your conscience,” she admitted, touched by his fine sense of honor. “Only, as I’ve tried to think it over and get at the right of it, it has seemed to me that there are, must be, two sides to the question. Every question has two sides, you know.”

“Yes; that is so.”

She went on, not sure of her ground, nor altogether certain of herself; yet feeling that this was a crucial moment and that every argument ought to be duly weighed and considered.

“You won’t feel hurt if I remind you that you are inexperienced? New light may come to you, so that the opinions you now hold you may not hold a year from now.”

“That is true; but so long as I do hold them I must be honest about it.”

“It is the opinion of Uncle Philip that this annoyance of the settlers cannot last. He says there are only a few places where they can farm successfully. But in the meantime, while they are trying every place, they are making a vast amount of trouble, by thus spreading all over the country. You know, yourself, that some of them are taking land where water can never be got to it. The immediate result will be, Uncle Philip says, that the ranchmen will be almost ruined, by being forced to surrender land to them that can never be fit for anything but a cattle range. The settlers will find out by and by that the land cannot be farmed; but while they are finding it out, and bringing loss to themselves, they will bring the downfall of the cattlemen.”

“I have thought of all these things,” he said.

He looked at her earnestly. He was troubled.

“Lucy, I wish I only knew what I ought to do in this crisis! I must face it and do something. I have looked for your Uncle Philip, and intend to look for him again, and shall try to have a talk with him. He is my father, and when he knows that he is, and I ask him to advise me as a father would advise a son——.” He stopped, in hesitation. “Anyway, whatever I do—whatever I do—remember that I love you!”

As soon as she was gone, he began another search for his father, driven by the feeling that he must explain fully to Davison his views and motives, as well as hear Davison’s arguments and opinions, and so perhaps be able to stand erect in Philip Davison’s estimation, as well as in his own. This was an anxious, even a wild desire, and it pressed him hard.

Fogg, scenting a reconciliation, sent a messenger in hurried search of Davison. At the hotel, and at the state house, the lobbies were overflowing. Men began to come to. Justin not singly but in platoons. Somehow the word had gone round that he was weakening. But he was not ready to talk. To friends and enemies alike he was non-committal. He wanted to see his father; he wanted to place in his hands that memorandum book, and get an acknowledgment of their relationship. The interminable buzz of the anxious and excited politicians struck against deaf ears.

Philip Davison was out of town.

Fogg, with telegraph and telephone, was wildly trying to reach him. Sibyl Dudley had come to the state house in shivering expectancy. The jarring hum of the political machine rose ever higher and higher, yet Justin gave no indication of a changed or changing purpose.

The ordeal through which he had passed since coming to Denver had taught him how to keep silent amid the maddest tumult. At first he had sought to justify whatever course he intended to pursue, only to find his statements snapped up, distorted, spread abroad with amendments he had never thought of, and so mutilated that often even he could not recognize the mangled fragments. So, having learned his lesson well, he kept still. Other men could do the talking. To the men who besieged him he had “nothing to say.” Until he saw Philip Davison and placed that diary in his hands he felt that he could have nothing to say. Even then he might act without saying anything. From time to time he observed Fogg watching him covertly.

While he waited, senate and house convened and began to vote for the senatorial candidates. Fogg went into the senate chamber, after speaking to a member of the lower house. Justin, whose name was far down on the rolls, remained in the lobby until a sergeant-at-arms came summoning members of the house to vote. Then he entered. When he dropped heavily into his seat he was greeted by suppressed cheering and a buzz of anxious and excited comment. These things did not move him; what moved him was a mental view of his father’s face, and that inner tide of feeling demanding the satisfaction of a father’s love.

Suddenly he recalled Fogg’s covert and anxious looks, and like a flash came the question: Could this whole thing be but a plot to bewilder him and cause him to vote with the ranchmen, or not at all? He knew that Lucy would not deceive him, but she might herself be deceived. He could not doubt that record in the handwriting of his mother, but after all the reference might be to another Philip Davison. His nerves tingled and his brain reeled under the influence of this startling suggestion.

While thus bewildered, his name was called. He half rose, staggering to his feet, hardly knowing what his physical actions were. But his mind began to clear. Clayton’s face, the dream of Peter Wingate, and that picture of the unsheltered range, rose before him; again he saw the illegal fences; again starving cattle looked at him with hungry eyes, and their piteous moans were borne to him on the breath of the freezing wind. Once more he was the thrall of the past. His courage stiffened, the firm will was firm again. He felt that there was but one rock on which he could set his trembling feet, and that was the rock of righteousness. If in this crucial moment he failed to stand for that which in his innermost soul he knew to be right, the self-respect which had nurtured his sturdy young manhood would be gone. His face whitened and his hand shook; but his voice was firm, when he announced his vote. It rang with clear decision through the silence that had fallen on the house.

Sibyl Dudley had lost.