ssed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that
he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.
And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with
him.

Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart
in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail
of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.
Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she
been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the
thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the
hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart
of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her
boy brought to this pass because of that man.

Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his
mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung
to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.
The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to
see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had
seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had
been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he
remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him
squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the
foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In
that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen
there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the
unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to
him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of
earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,
whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.

It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his
cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely
listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had
heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar
with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like
Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the
exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been
satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.

Then a horrible suspicion l