and attitude. "There isn't
anything that I could do for you, Ann, that I wouldn't do as it is,
without you pretending that way."

She did not quite take it in at first that she could not deceive him.

"I thought you used to care about me," she said; "I thought perhaps you
did yet; I thought perhaps"--she put well-feigned shyness into her
tone--"that you weren't the sort that would turn away from us just
because of what father has done. All the other folks will, of course.
I'm pretty much alone."

"I won't help you to break the laws, Ann. Law and righteousness is the
same for the most part. Your feeling as a daughter leads you the other
way, of course; but it ain't no good--it won't do any good to him in the
long run, and it would be wrong for me to do anything but just what I
ought to do as constable. When that's done we can talk of being friends
if you like, but don't go acting a lie with the hope of getting the
better of me. It hurts me to see you do it, Ann."

For the first time there dawned in her mind a new respect for him, but
that did not alter her desperate resolve. She had been standing before
him in the moonlight with downcast face; now she suddenly threw up her
head with a gesture that reminded him of the way a drowning man throws
up his hands.

"You've been wanting to convert me," she said. "You want me to sign the
pledge, and to stop going to dances and playing cards, and to bring up
Christa that way."

All the thoughts that he had had since his reform of what he could do
for this girl and her sister if she would only let him came before his
heart now, lit through and through with the light of his love that at
that moment renewed its strength with a power which appalled him.

She took a few steps nearer to him.

"Father didn't mean to do any harm," she whispered hastily; "he's got no
more sin on his soul than a child that gets angry and fights for what it
wants. He's just like a child, father is; but it's been a lesson to
him, and he'll never do it again. Think of the shame to Christa and me
if he was hanged. And I've striven so to keep us respectable--Bart, you
know I have. There's no shame in the world like your father being----"
(there was a nervous gasp in her throat before she could go on)--"and
he'd be awfully frightened. Oh, you don't know how frightened he'd be!
If I thought they were going to do that to him, it would just kill me.
I'll do anything; I wouldn't mind so much if they'd take m