Chapter I

The long Colorado twilight was over. But it was not yet quite lamplight time by the clock, and Miss Sophy Burr was sitting in a brown study at her kitchen window. This was the time she always took to make a swift retrospect in her mind of the results, profitable or otherwise, of the day just ended. She could think better in the dark, and the small economy of doing without a lamp until the last possible minute gave her a distinct pleasure. She was the strangest mixture of generosity and stinginess ever poured into human mould, her boarders said; and nobody knew better than they, for there was not a boarder in the house who had not been with her at least a year: some five and some six, and one old couple—Mr. and Mrs. Jones—had been with her ten. They were in Colorado for their health,—Mr. Jones for Mrs. Jones’s, and _vice versa_ Mrs. Jones for Mr. Jones’s; so they always declared, a rare instance of uniformity in conjugal needs. They began with Miss Sophy in the year when she began, and the town began,—almost before Miss Sophy fairly began; for all she had in way of a house then was a tent with a sort of fly attachment for a kitchen, and the boarders ate their meals in Miss Sophy’s bedroom; or, to put it differently, Miss Sophy was obliged, owing to the scarcity of accommodations and the rush of custom, to sleep temporarily in her dining-room. That sounds better than to say that her boarders dined in her bedroom.

This was ten years ago. But to look at Pendar Basin to-day, and to recall what it was then, one would say it must have been nearer twenty, so marvellously had the colony grown and developed. It was now what is called a “thriving” place of some six thousand people,—all active, all making money, none rich, none very poor, few of any pretence to what is called in older places “social position,” but all or nearly all of fair intelligence and good business education in their respective callings.

It had the making of a town in it,—a superb site, good water, the command of two mountain passes through which must go up and out of the Basin all the freight for two large mining districts in the west and in the south. A railroad, one of the main Colorado lines, brought in the supplies to be thus shipped, and kept it, moreover, in close relation with the outside world. On the whole, a very lucky little village was Pendar Basin; and especially lucky were those who came in the beginning, in the “tent and coyote” days, as they were called, and had seen the lots they bought then for hundreds of dollars boom up into value rated by thousands.

Miss Sophy had not ten dollars in the world when she began. Her story was a sad one, but its details do not belong here. She had come out from New England to Colorado to join her lover; found him dead, buried only the week before her arrival, his last words full of anguished anxiety on her account, for he had not been successful, and had nothing to leave her except a grave to be tended; and the first thing the poor soul did, was to spend a few of her dollars in building a high fence around the bare sandy mound which hid her lover from her sight. Then she hired a tent, put out her sign, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work to earn money enough to carry her home. But the spell of the wilderness seized hold upon her, and she never went; and now there was not in all the town a better-known, a more universally respected woman than Miss Sophy: respected by the women because of her helpful cheery nature and exceeding decorum of conduct; respected by the men because she had a “level head” and “owned considerable property,”—surest passports to favor in the minds of business men.

As Miss Sophy sat revolving in her mind the relative proportions between what she had expended and what she had received on the day just closed, a frown deepened on her forehead. The balance did not please her. The margin of profit which she had prescribed to herself as a uniform rule had been diminished by injudicious luxury added to dinner.

“’Twas the jelly,” she said to herself. “That was what did it. But I can’t bring myself to give roast mutton without it. Capers come cheaper and go farther. I’ll boil oftener.”

At least hundreds of times in the last eight years Miss Sophy had come to this or similar resolutions; but they always failed her when the instant arrived for putting them into practice. Her love of a good dinner herself, and her still keener love of the approbation she won by setting it before others, kept up perpetual warfare with her savingness, and being two to one, often came off victorious,—often enough to keep up her reputation for setting the best table in the town; not often enough, however, to prevent her making money in the long run, and coming out at the end of the year with a creditable surplus ahead.

Just as Miss Sophy had said, half aloud, the last words of her soliloquy, she heard a faint knock at the door,—an irresolute, vacillating sort of knock, which aroused her curiosity at once.

“Who ever’s that,” she said, rising briskly, “that don’t know his mind—or his fingers?” and she opened the door with impatient quickness.

A tall man, with a painful expression of incertitude and feebleness in his bent figure, stood before her without speaking.

“Well?” said Miss Sophy, sharply.

“I see a woman come in here a little while ago,” he stammered, “’bout half an hour back.”

“Well, supposin’ you did!” interrupted Miss Sophy, still more sharply.

The man lifted his eyes to hers, with the look of a hunted animal. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, I didn’t mean to ’fend ye; I thought mebbe ’twas my wife, ’n’ I’d like to speak to her.”

“Your wife!” cried Miss Sophy, eying him keenly,—she began to suspect him of being either a tramp or a lunatic,—“your wife! There hasn’t any woman come in here but me; ’twas me came int’ the gate just now. What’d you think your wife was wantin’ in here?”

The man hung his head. A strange hesitancy seemed to hold back his every word.

“She said she was goin’ out to look for work,” he said slowly, “an’ I thought ’twas her I see turnin’ in here. Beg yor pardon, ma’am. Sorry I troubled ye.”

“’Tain’t any great trouble answerin’ a question,” replied Miss Sophy, her heart warming at once at the symptoms of suffering. “What sort of work did she want? What do you do? Do you want work?”

“I’m a carpenter,” answered the man, still speaking slowly, and with almost a stumbling vagueness; “’t least that’s my trade; I hain’t got any tools now, though; I’ve been teamin’ since I’ve been here.”

“Do you want work?” asked Miss Sophy again, curtly.

No reply from the man. He seemed lost in thought, his eyes resting on Miss Sophy’s face almost like the unseeing eyes of a sleepwalker.

“Man alive!” exclaimed Miss Sophy. “I’m askin’ you if you want work! I can get you somethin’ to do.”

Still in the same curiously irresolute, hesitant voice the man answered: “No, I donno’s as I do; that is, I donno’s I’ll be here; if I was here, I’d be glad o’ work.”

Miss Sophy’s patience evaporated. “Well, you are here, ’s near ’s I can judge; but you don’t seem to me to want work so much ’s some men I’ve met. I don’t know how you expect to get along in this world without workin’!”

“I don’t,” said the man. “’Tain’t that I ain’t willin’ to work. Ye hain’t seen anything o’ my wife, have ye?” he added, with a sudden desperate energy strangely unlike his manner hitherto. “She’s somethin’ your build, an’ about your height; that was the reason I took you for her jest now; hain’t no sech woman been here to-day? I’ve looked ’most everywhere else I could think of she’d be likely to go. Hain’t she stopped here?”

“Stark crazy, evidently,” thought Miss Sophy, as she answered: “No, she hasn’t been here. No woman has been into this door to-day but me. Tell me where you live, and if your wife does call here I’ll tell her you want to see her.”

He started apprehensively. “Oh, no, ma’am,” he said, “don’t you say nothin’ to her about it. She doesn’t like it to have me goin’ round followin’ her up. But I thought if she was in the house I’d like to get a word with her. My name’s Riker, ma’am,—Zeph Riker. We live down in the Flat; ye can’t miss it. If I’m here I’d be glad to do teamin’; or, if it wasn’t for not havin’ tools, carpenterin’ ’s my trade. Good-night, ma’am,” and turning with a swift movement quite out of keeping with his shambling, inert attitude, he was gone.

Miss Sophy stood gazing out into the darkness after him for some seconds before she recovered from her bewilderment.

“Well, if that don’t beat all the cur’us things that’s ever come to my door yet!” she mentally ejaculated as she walked slowly through the kitchen into the dining-room and began setting her supper-table. “I guess he’s crazy, poor thing! An’ yet, he didn’t seem somehow exactly like crazy neither. Perhaps some o’ the folks’ll know him. It’s borne in on me that that man wants lookin’ after.”

None of the “folks,” that is, Miss Sophy’s boarders, had ever heard of Zeph Riker. As she told them the tale of her interview they all with one accord began to warn her against letting her sympathies go out towards him. He was a tramp; he was a burglar; he was a madman. One after another the boarders confidently advanced their theories of explanation of his singular behavior. It was odd to see, but a student of psychological phenomena could have classified the fact, how, as the conversation went on, Miss Sophy instinctively took the attitude of Zeph’s defender.

“I don’t b’leeve he’s one o’ them things,” she said. “I ain’t goin’ to say it for sure, but I b’leeve he’s jest kind o’ dumb with trouble. I think that’s all ’t ails him,—some dreadful kind o’ trouble; ’n’ I think he ought to be looked after. It’s been growin’ on me, the more I’ve thought on ’t, that ’twas trouble he was in. Trouble makes folks that way sometimes,—makes the words kind o’ stick, an’ your head seem to be all of a kind of a buzz, so you don’t know anythin’. I think somebody ought to look after him.”

Whenever it became clear to Miss Sophy that a thing or a person wanted “looking after,” the next logical step in her mind was the conclusion that she herself was the person whose duty lay in the line of that precise “looking after.” “And especially after the trouble I’ve seen myself,” said Miss Sophy, as she took her energetic way the next afternoon towards “The Flat,”—a part of the town in which, strangely enough, she had never before been. Miss Sophy was not a walker; that is, not an outdoor walker. The number of miles her tireless feet walked each day in her house it would have greatly surprised her to be told. She always said it tired her to death to walk, she was too stout; and when her “folks” sometimes observed, “Why, Miss Sophy, you are always walking, you never sit down,” she would reply, “Oh, but I don’t call it walkin’, just runnin’ round the house.” And she honestly thought so; and felt over-fatigued by a half-hour’s walk out of doors, when she would be fresh as a lark at the end of eight or nine hours’ steady trot on her own floors.

It was a warm day, and the perspiration stood in drops on Miss Sophy’s face when she finally found herself in the centre of the low, thinly settled district known as the Flat. Looking around her with mingled disgust and compassion, she indulged in the strongest ejaculation ever permitted to pass her lips.

“Land o’ the livin’! What a hole! Poor creaturs! I don’t suppose this land costs anythin’, an’ that’s what brought ’em all in here. ’Tain’t any more nor less than a kind o’ cellar! A nice time scarlet fever’d have if it was to get in amongst these shanties. It’s a shame! I never knew there was such a place ’s this in this town. Well, one half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives, is jest as true in small places as in big, I vow! I don’t know what the man meant by sayin’ I couldn’t miss it. As if there wasn’t but one house in the Flat, and that his’n!” and Miss Sophy stood looking right and left in blank perplexity. The dogs and the children of the Flat soon gathered around her in wonder at her appearance, and from one of the oldest and least terrified of the children she learned which of the shanties was “Zeph’s.”

It was a poor little place, unfenced, uncared for, the house unpainted and dilapidated; and in strange mockery, it seemed, of the probable needs of the occupants of such a house, a trim new tying-post stood in front of the door. Looming up gauntly at its side was the half-done frame of a two-story house, evidently long since abandoned to wind and weather; for the beams were gray from exposure, and weeds grew high where floors should have been.

“Shouldn’t wonder a mite if that was his’n,” thought Miss Sophy. “He looked just the kind o’ man to leave off that way. He wants spurrin’ up.” And there was an unconsciously authoritative quality in the very knock Miss Sophy gave at Zeph’s door.

No answer. Again she knocked, still more sharply. No sound of any one stirring in the house. Impatiently Miss Sophy stepped to the window—there was but one—and looked in. An ejaculation of dismay escaped her.

“Of all the pigsties, for such a decent man as he looked, to be livin’ in!” she said. It was indeed an unsightly place,—a bare floor, long unswept; a rusty cooking-stove in the centre of the room, ashes and brands piled on the hearth in front; a battered table; wooden chairs; a few utensils and dishes on cupboard shelves in one corner; through a half-open door into an adjoining room were to be seen untidy beds, and a bureau, with drawers wide open, looking as if they had just been ransacked by thieves; on a small stand at the head of the bed was a brass candlestick in which the candle had burned down to the socket, leaving grimy strata of melted tallow and blackened wick piled around it.

Miss Sophy’s New England soul revolted.

“I donno’s there’s any use tryin’ to help anybody that’d have a house like this,” she thought, and stepped back from the window, again looking around her in a half-compassionate, half-resentful study of the region. As she did so she perceived a strange head peering over a high board fence just beyond the unfinished frame building. It was an old woman. Her thin gray hair, streaked with yellow, drawn up in a tight knot on the top of her head, was surmounted again by a pair of huge iron-rimmed spectacles of a kind out of vogue for fifty years. Her hair looked twenty years older than her face, and her face, again, twenty years older than her eyes, which were bright hazel, clear and keen, making the spectacles seem a grotesque adornment rather than a necessary aid to vision. The old woman had been watching Miss Sophy’s every movement, and as she saw her turn away from the window, called out, “Ain’t nobody in thar, be ther?”

“No,” said Miss Sophy, “no one.”

“I allowed he hedn’t come hum,” said the woman. “I seed thar warn’t no smoke out’er’n ther chimbly, ’n’ I said ter Vilm, sez I, ‘I jest allow thet thar Zeph’s been walkin’ ther streets all night, I allow he hez!’”

Miss Sophy walked briskly towards the fence. As she did so, the head disappeared from view, and simultaneously from behind the boards came the hospitable invitation, “Ef yeow’ll step raound ter the front a piece, I’ll let yer in; this gate’s done nailed up, kase ther young uns’s allers lettin’ ther pig aout.”

“I never!” thought Miss Sophy. “What next, I wonder!” But she complied with the directions, and reaching the other side of the house found herself confronted by her strange interlocutor, who exclaimed, “Oh, ther yer be! I allowed yer wan’t comin’, mebbe! It took yer ser long, I allowed yer’d gone off. Yer wuz lookin’ for Zeph Riker, wuzn’t yer? Did yer want him ter work fur yer?”

“Yes,” replied the dazed Miss Sophy, who had never before heard the Missouri vernacular, and had never before seen so strange a figure as the one which now stood before her.

“Wall, thet’s jest what I wuz a hopin’ up when I seed yer gwine ter ther door. I allowed to myself thet Zeph wuz gwine ter git holped; he’s clar down, Zeph is, ’n’ I allow he’ll jest git ter be outer’n his wits ef he keeps on ther way he’s ben goin’, er walkin’, walkin’, night-times ’n’ daytimes; they’s all one ter him, he sez, an’ she ain’t wuth it, ’n’ never wuz. Thar’s lots kin tell him thet; but he won’t listen to nary word agen her, nary. Vilm, he ’lows he’s crazy, naow; but I don’t. He’s got’s wits, Zeph hez; an’ there wan’t never no better man cum inter this yer flairt, never. I allow ter you ther warn’t. He’s reel good, Zeph is. I ain’t gwine ter say but what ther’s men thet’s rustled more’n he did; but ’tain’t in some men _to_ rustle; thar’s some that ken, an’ thar’s some that can’t; an’ thar can’t nobody rustle when ther heart’s took outer ’em; ’n’ thet’s what’s ther matter with Zeph; he’s got the heart gone plumb outer him; he’s been settin’ thar ’n thet house sence she’s went off this last time, ’n’ I allow he’d ha’ starved ter death ef I hedn’t tuk him over vittles. We’re pore, but we ain’t gwine ter see a human critter starve, not right next dore, we ain’t. I seed him when he went off yesterday mornin’. I was jest cummin’ crost ther floor, an’ I seed him kinder stealin’ by. He know’d I’d ask him whar he wuz gwine. An’ sez I, ‘Zeph Riker, air yer goin’ huntin’ thet woman agen? I allow yer the biggest fool in all this yer flairt, Zeph Riker.’ Thet’s what I said. I hain’t no patience with a man that’ll git down ’n’ be run over wuss ’n ary dog. An’ he jest give me sech er look, an’ he sez, ‘She’s my wife, Gammer! an’, more ’n somever, she’s took the chillen along this time.’ ‘She hain’t!’ sez I. ‘Yes, she hez,’ sez he. Wall, when I heered she’d got the chillen, I hedn’t no more ter say. He’d got ter go hunt ’em, ’n’ git ’em away ef he ennywise could; fur ’t’s a dumb shame fur little chillen to be with a—sech a critter’s she is!” And Gammer Stein stopped at last, not for lack of words, but of breath.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” was Miss Sophy’s sole reply to this outpouring of mingled invective and sympathy.

“Don’t know what I’m talkin’ abaout!” cried the old woman, wrathfully. “Hain’t you heered haow Zeph Riker’s wife’s allers gwine off ’n’ leavin’ him? Sometimes ’tis one thing, ’n’ sometimes ’tis another; she’s allers got an excuse ready; most gen’ully it’s lookin’ fur work, she sez; she lets on she’s got ter support the family, ’n’ she’s allers a scandalizin’ him up ’n’ down; she ’lows he don’t yern nothin’, ’n’ she sez ef one don’t bring in, the other must; ’n’ so she goes off ter work down ’n the restaurants, fust one, ’n’ then another, but’s allers ’n the one whar that skunk o’ a feller she’s goin’ with, thet Nat Leeson, ’s a cookin’. Thet’s the kind o’ work she’s a doin’! I allow she’d oughter be took up; she’d oughter; sech women’s a disgrace to thar sex, they air now. Hain’t yeow heered nothin’ abaout it? I allow yeow must be a stranger hyar, ef yeow hain’t heered o’ Rusha Riker. She’s jest famed, ill famed, too, in this hyar town. I allowed thar warn’t nobody thet hedn’t heered o’ her scandaliginous carak’ter!”

This last adjective was too much for Miss Sophy’s risibles. In spite of herself she laughed; at which Gammer Stein broke out again: “I allow ’tain’t no larfin’ marter; it’s jest life ’n’ death, thet’s what ’tis, to this hyar man ’n’ his chillen, ’n’ ef thar ain’t murder in ’t afore all’s said ’n’ done, I allow we kin be thankful t’ ther A’mighty. What wuz ye wantin’ o’ Zeph, ef so be ’s ye never heered o’ him afore?” And pulling down her spectacles, and adjusting them perilously near the end of her nose, Gammer Stein looked scrutinizingly across their iron rims at her visitor. “I don’t know ye,” she said distrustfully. “What mought yer name be? Be ye new cum?”

“Oh, no,” replied Miss Sophy. “I have lived here ever since the town was begun; but I live a mile away from here, and I have never happened to hear of Zeph till yesterday, when he came to my house lookin’ for his wife. I thought he was in some sort of trouble, an’ I’d look after him a little.”

“Jes so, jes so,” said Gammer, instantly appeased by the presence of sympathy. “Yer live on ther hill, I allow?”

“Yes,” said Miss Sophy.

“Land’s drefful dear up thar,” replied Gammer, “or else me ’n’ Vilm, we’d been up thar tew, yeow bet! I didn’t never like hollers; but pore folks ’s got ter live whar they kin. Back ’n Missouri we wuz up on a ridge like, but ’twarn’t ser healthy ’s this, fur all ’twuz higher; ’n’ Vilm’s allers tellin’ me thet this hyar flairt ain’t reelly a holler. Thar can’t be no hollers, he sez, when ther hull country’s ez high up ez this is; but I tell him I don’t want ter live ’n enny place thet ser much ’s favors ther look ’v er holler, ’n’ ’s soon ’s we git er little erhead we’s got ter move outer’n this flairt. What part o’ ther hill der yeow live on? Be yeow a married woman?”

“No,” replied Miss Sophy, curtly, with something in her tone which the sensitive old woman felt without fully recognizing, and instinctively wished she had not asked the question. “I have never been married. I live alone. I keep the boarding-house next to the Presbyterian church.”

“Dew yer?” exclaimed Gammer. “Naow I allow thet’s kind o’ cur’us. Vilm, he’s done teamin’ ter yeour place; he’s tolt me abaout yeow. Don’t yer want er man steady ter dew yer outside work? Ef ye’d take Zeph in, he’s handy; he’s a fust-rate carpenter tew, ’n’ a good hand fur hosses; ef he’d jest git hisself inter some sech place, thar’s plenty ’d take keer o’ the chillen for jest their keep, ’n’ thay’re li’le, ’twouldn’t be much, ’n’ let thet hussy o’ his’n go whar she belongs; ’n’ I allow thar ain’t much doubtin’ whar ’t ’d be. Ef he cud wunst git shet ’v her wunst fur all, thar’d be some hope o’ Zeph yit. He wuz a reel likely man when they fust moved in hyar three years ago. She wan’t what she oughter be, neow I don’t s’pose; but she hadn’t gin herself clean away t’ the devil then ’s she hez sence. I allow it’s strange yer hain’t never heered o’ her. Why, she’s been up inter the jail, ’n’ her name ’n the paper, ’n the ‘Times,’ ’n’ the trial, ’n’ all. Jerushy Riker ‘disorderly’ they called it; ’n’ Zeph he paid the fine, ’n’ all the costs, ’n’ got her hum; ’n’ I allow ter yeow ’twan’t more ’n a week ’fore she wuz aout agen, ’n’ feathers ’n her bunnit, ’n’ goin’ to dances wi’ thet Nat, ’s brazhen ’s any brass ye ever seen. ’N’ there wasn’t erry woman ’n this flairt ’ud ser much ’s speak ter her, only ther men. I allow men is shameful; ’n’ ’s long ’s they’ll go with her ’n’ give her things, she just spites the women. My man won’t hev nothin’ ter say ter her; he sez he’d kill her ef she wuz his’n, ’n’ I sh’d hope he would. But thet ther Zeph, he jest worships her, ’s ef she wuz the best wife a man ever hed. He’ll foller her, ’n’ coax her, ’n’ hang round her, ’n’ give her his last cent he’s got in this blessed yarth, ef she’ll only look wunst torerds him.”

“He’s a fool!” broke in Miss Sophy.

“Wall, yis, I allow he is,” said Gammer, reflectively. “I allow he must be; an’ yit he ain’t, nuther. Zeph ain’t no fool. Ef a man gits took thet way ’bout a woman, he can’t holp hisself, ’thout he kin git shet ’v her outern out. Thet’s what I’m tellin’ him allers. I sez to him jest this last week, sez I, ‘Zeph Riker, yeow jest light aout er hyar; yeow take yer team,’—he’s got a fust-rate team ef he hain’t sold ’em since last week to git money ’n’ go hunt fur thet hussy,—‘yeow take yeour team ’n’ ther young uns, ’n’ light aout; ’n’ yeow keep er travellin’ till yer’ve got whar yer can’t never hear name of her agin. Yeow kin stop when your money’s giv aout, ’n’ work till yer git more ter go on with; ’n’ yeow jest keep movin’. I allow Californy’d be fur enough; ’n’ livin’ ’s easy made thar, everybody sez thet’s ben thar; yeow jest light aout er hyar.’”

“What did he say?” asked Miss Sophy, breathlessly.

“He didn’t say but jest tew words, he didn’t,” replied Gammer. “But them tew, ’n’ the way he sed ’em, wuz more ’n some folks’s preachin’ all day. He sez, sez he, ‘Gammer, I can’t;’ ’n’ I allow to yeow I ’spect thet’s jest the trew on’t; ’n’ ef he can’t, he can’t.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you think he loves the woman still!” cried Miss Sophy.

“But he doos,” said Gammer. “Thet’s why Vilm sez he’s a fool, ’n’ I can’t gainsay ’t he ain’t; ’n’ yit thar’s times, I allow to yeow, when I git ter feelin’ ’s ef he wuz better ’n most folks. He don’t never give her a hash word; he’s allers’s glad ter see her ’s aour pup hyar ter see the chillen cumin’ hum when school’s aout; ’n’ he’ll slave hisself ter death, ’n’ sell the coat offen his back, ter git her all she wants; ’n’ she don’t give him ser much ’s a word er a look, let alone disgracin’ him ’n’ his chillen ’n’ the name he’s gin her! I donno ’s the Lord ’s gwine ter call him a fool er not. It kind o’ cums over me cur’us sometimes, ther way he acts.” And the old woman gazed half-inquiringly, half-shamefacedly, into Miss Sophy’s face.

Miss Sophy’s eyes were full of tears. She tried to keep them back, but they were too big to be concealed,—genuine, unmistakable tears. Brushing them away impatiently, she said, “Well, he’s a fool, anyhow!”

“I s’pose he must be,” replied Gammer. “Thar ain’t many like him.”

“I wonder where he is now,” said Miss Sophy.

“No knowin’,” said Gammer. “It’s two days naow he’s ben huntin’ her. He won’t go in bold like ’n’ ask ef she’s thar ’t these places, kase it mads her. He’ll jest hang raound ’n’ watch. He sez he won’t mortify her! Him mortify her! Thet sounds likely, don’t it? He sed thet ter me wunst, when I sed ter him, sez I, ‘Zeph Riker, ef yer want her ser bad’s yer say, take er perliceman ’n’ go git her. She’s yer wife. The law guvs her ter ye where somever yer kin ketch her.’ ‘I wouldn’t mortify her thet way,’ sez he; ’n’ then I jest up ’n’ I sez ter him—wall, I pollergized ter him arter fur the words I used; they wuz outrageous, ’n’ ther wouldn’t nobody but a fool ha’ stood ’em, Vilm sed; but somehow, I allow ter yeow, I’ve allers liked him better sence thet day. Sez he, ‘I don’t feel ter blame yer, not fur nothin’ yer say. Thar can’t nobody understand, but I can’t holp myself.’”

Strange emotions were tugging at Miss Sophy’s heart-strings. What had this poor man’s experiences in common with hers? Nothing, surely. The lover she had lost had been an upright man. Her affection had never been put to the strain of wrestling with even so much as a suspicion of the unworthiness of its object. And if such evil destiny as that had ever befallen her, she would have seemed to be the last person,—she with her practical common sense, clear business head, matter-of-fact way of looking at life,—the last person, surely, to have clung to a base and dishonored man. And yet this pathetic story she was hearing of Zeph Riker’s inalienable affection for the miserable creature he called wife seemed to be breaking up within her bosom the very foundations of some strange, undreamed-of, mighty emotion which threatened to overwhelm her.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” thought Miss Sophy. “It must be the long walk. It always does upset me to walk.”

“I must be going now,” she said suddenly. “I have a great deal to do. I wish you’d let me know if there is anything I can do to help this poor man. If he wants work I can give him a good deal.” And she turned abruptly away, to the great discomfiture of Gammer Stein, who had not said half her say.

“Ye’ll call raound agen, won’t ye?” she called after her. “Dew. I’d like ter see yer fust-rate.”

“Perhaps I will,” said Miss Sophy, “some day. But I’m very busy. You must come and see me.”

This pleased Gammer even better.

“I allow I will,” she said eagerly. “I’d like ter see yer place. I wuz by thar. It’s an awful nice house yer got.”

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Sophy, already some paces away, and quickening her steps to avoid further talk. She walked unconsciously faster and faster till she reached home. Not for ten years had Miss Sophy’s spinster breast been the seat of such keen and conflicting emotion. She could neither analyze it nor shake it off. The image of her long-buried lover rose up before her with almost terrifying vividness, and she seemed compelled by some strange power outside of herself to continue thinking of him, fancying what would have been the result had their marriage taken place and he afterward proved as unfit for trust, unworthy of love, as Zeph’s wife. She felt herself disloyal at the very thought, but she could not free herself from it.

“What nonsense!” she said to herself, sternly. “There wasn’t a bad drop of blood in Robert Barrett’s veins, not one; not a man in that family ever went to the bad.”

“But what if he had?” persisted this strangely disquieted spirit in her breast. “What if he had? What if he had been overpowered by temptation? He was human. Men seemingly as good as he have fallen; have become drunkards; have been unfaithful to their wives. What if he had? What would you have done? Wouldn’t you have clung to him through everything? Do you suppose you could ever have left off loving him, no matter what he had done?”

“No, I know I couldn’t,” responded Miss Sophy’s passionate heart, also strangely disquieted in her breast; “I know I couldn’t!”

And then by a not unnatural sequence there came into her thoughts the solemn words of the marriage service, which she could never hear without a strange pang, remembering that she had once expected to hear them spoken for herself. “‘For better, for worse; till death do us part.’ What does that mean,” she said, “if it does not mean just what this poor Zeph is doing? ‘For better, for worse,’ no matter how much worse! I do believe I should have looked at it just as he does, this very minute! I wouldn’t wonder if I’d ha’ been just such a fool ’s he is; an’ I don’t know as I call it exactly bein’ a fool, neither, any more ’n she does!” And with a tremendous effort Miss Sophy shook herself free from the bootless soliloquy, and went about her work, reiterating in her mind the original resolution with which she had left home early in the afternoon,—that that man must be “looked after.”