" he admitted. "What is it this
time--poker?"

"No, it isn't poker. Worse than that. You've been setting a deplorable
example to the young."

"To young ladies--like Miss Virginia?" he wanted to know.

"No, to young Christians. I don't know what our good deacons will say
about it." She illuminated her severity with a flashing smile. "Don't
you know that the sins of the fathers are to descend upon their
children even to the third and fourth generation? Don't you know that
when a man does wrong he must die punished, and his children and his
wife, of course, and that the proper thing to do is to stand back and
thank Heaven we haven't been vile sinners?"

"Now, don't you begin on that, Miss Virginia," he warned.

"And after the man had disgraced himself and shot you, after all
respectable people had given him an extra kick to let him know he must
stay down and had then turned their backs upon him. I'm not surprised
that you're ashamed."

"Where did you get hold of this fairy-tale?" he plucked up courage to
demand.

"From Norma Pelton. She told me everything, the whole story from
beginning to end."

"It's right funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable
young lady--unless you went to deliver that extra kick you was
mentioning," he grinned.

She dropped her raillery. "It was splendid. I meant to ask Mr. Ridgway
to do something for them, but this is so much better. It takes them
away from the place of his disgrace and away from temptation. Oh, I
don't wonder Norma kissed you."

"She told you that, too, did she?"

"Yes. I should have done it, too, in her place."

He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but--"

"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within
the portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's
not so public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that
way?"

She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting
upon. Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on
domestic science.

"This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books.
Come out into the sun and live," he invited.

They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the
shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper
streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring
sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The
roadside