ival in honor of his
arrival, Sally broke down and laughed helplessly.

Mike stared at her, aghast. He felt that he'd hated the Chief when he
thought the Chief was going to tell the tale on him as a joke. He'd told
it on himself as a penance, in the place of the blow he'd given the
Chief and which the Chief wouldn't return. To Mike it was still tragedy.
It was still an outrage to his dignity. But Sally was laughing. She
rocked back and forth next to Joe, helpless with mirth.

"Oh, Mike!" she gasped. "It's beautiful! They must have been saying such
lovely, respectful things, while you were calling them names and wanting
to kill them! They'd have been bragging to each other about how you
were--visiting them because they'd been such good people, and--this was
the reward of well-spent lives, and you--you----"

She leaned against Joe and shook. The car went on. The Chief chuckled.
Haney grinned. Joe watched Mike as this new aspect of his disgrace got
into his consciousness. It hadn't occurred to Mike, before, that anybody
but himself had been ridiculous. It hadn't occurred to him, until he
lost his temper, that Haney and the Chief would ride him mercilessly
among themselves, but would not dream of letting anybody outside the
gang do so.

Presently Mike managed to grin a little. It was a twisty grin, and not
altogether mirthful.

"Yeah," he said wrily. "I see it. They were crazy too. I should've had
more sense than to get mad." Then his grin grew a trifle twistier. "I
didn't tell you that the thing that made me maddest was when they wanted
to put earrings on me. I grabbed a club then and--uh--persuaded them I
didn't like the idea."

Sally chortled. The picture of the small, truculent Mike in frenzied
revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry....
Mike turned to the two big men and shoved at them imperiously.

"Move over!" he growled. "If you two big lummoxes had dropped in on
those crazy goofs instead of me, they'd've thought you were elephants
and set you to work hauling logs!"

He squirmed to a seat between them. He still looked ashamed, but it was
shame of a different sort. Now he looked as if he wished he hadn't
mistrusted his friends for even a moment. And he included Sally.

"Anyhow," he said suddenly in a different tone, "maybe it did do some
good for me to get all worked up! I got kind of frantic. I figured
somebody'd made a fool of me, and I was going to put something over on
you."