and took it off
and shook the wet from it, and dropped it back upon his head again. He
leaned against the wall by the door where there was a little holy-water
font, and stuck his gross thumbs in his belt, and waited for her to begin.
Always he followed that plan when the woman was angry. Nothing remained
for any bloke to teach Bough about the sex. You let her row a bit, and
when she had done herself out, you put in what you had got to say. That
was Bough's way with them always.

"You have written letters to me and followed me."

His grinning red mouth and tobacco-stained teeth showed in the beard. He
looked at her and waited.

"Why have you done this? And, now that you have brought yourself into my
sight, quitting the safe shelter of darkness and anonymity, what is to
hinder me from handing you over to those who administer and enforce
Martial Law in this town, and will deal with you as you deserve?"

His light eyes glittered. His teeth showed again in the brown bush. He
spat upon the floor of the sacred place, and answered:

"That's all blow. How do I know what you mean about writing letters and
following? Who has seen me doing it? Not one of the mob. I'm just a man
that has come in off the road out of the rain. Maybe I have no business in
this crib? That's for you to say.... Maybe I have a message for somebody
you know. So you don't choose to give it, then that's for her to hear."

He swung about in pretended haste, and laid his hand upon the door.

"Stop," she said, with white lips. "You will not molest the person to whom
you refer. You will give your message--if it be one--to me, and to me
alone."

"High and mighty," the ugly, wordless smile that faced round on her again
seemed to say. "But in a little I'll bring you down off that...." He spat
again upon the Chapel floor, and scratched his head under his hat, and
began, like a simple, good-natured fellow, a rough miner with a heart of
gold:

"No offence is meant, lady, and why should it be taken?"

She seemed to grow in height as she folded her arms in their flowing black
sleeves, and looked down upon him silently. The boiling whirlpool in her
breast mounted as it spun, stifling her. But she was outwardly calm. He
went smoothly on, with an occasional display of red mouth and grinning
teeth in the big beard, and always that baleful glitter in his strange
light eyes:

"I'm a man that, in the goodness of his heart, is always doing jobs for
other people, an