conviction, and hastened
down the steps to help Haney up.

The gambler waved his proffered arm aside. "I'm not so bad as all that,"
said he. "I let me little Corporal help me--sometimes for love of it,
not because I nade it."

He was still gaunt and pale, but his eyes were of unconquerable fire,
and the lift of his head from the shoulders was still leopard-like. He
was dressed in a black frock-coat, with a cream-colored vest and gray
trousers, and looked very well indeed--quite irreproachable.

Bertha was clad in black also--a close-fitting, high-necked gown which
made her fair skin shine like fire-flushed ivory, and her big serious
eyes and vivid lips completed the charm of her singular beauty. Her
bosom had lost some of its girlish flatness, but the lines of her hips
and thighs still resembled those of a boy, and the pose of her head was
like that of an athlete.

"Won't you come in and take off your hat?" asked Mrs. Congdon. And she
followed without reply, leaving the two men on the porch.

Without appearing to do so she saw everything in the house, which was
hardly more than an artistic camp, so far as the first floor was
concerned. Navajo rugs were on the floor, Moqui plaques starred the
walls, and Acoma ollas perched upon book-shelves of thick plank. The
chairs were rude, rough, and bolted at the joints. The room made a
pleasant impression on Bertha, though she could not have told why. The
ceiling was dark, the walls green, the woodwork stained pine, and yet it
had charm.

Mrs. Congdon explained meanwhile that Frank had made the big
centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker
at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to
shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad.
He's a regular kid anyway--always doing the things he ought not to do."

In this way she tried to put her guest at her ease, while Bertha sat
looking at her in an absent-minded way, apparently neither frightened
nor embarrassed--on the contrary, she seemed to be thinking of something
else. At last, to force a reply, Mrs. Congdon asked: "How do you like my
husband's portrait of Mr. Haney?"

"I don't know," she slowly replied. "It looks like him, and then again
it don't. I guess I'm not up to hand paintin's. Enlarged photographs are
about my size."

"You're disappointed, then?"

"Well, yes, I don't know but I am. I didn't think it was going to look
just that way