d it in his hands. The girl
went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate
eagerness.

"I didn't mean to do it, though--God knows I didn't mean to do it! He
treated me mighty sorry--it was lowdown and mean all the way through,
the way he done me--but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was only
aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It was
accidental-like--it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't never
intentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody's
forever and a day imposin' on me!" She quavered with the puny passion of
her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with
rods.

Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds
in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think of
the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.

[Illustration: "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."
--_Page 164._]

"I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was," she went on
in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a
long way off. "That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin'
shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in a
political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was
workin' in a hotel there--one of the dinin' room help. That was two
years ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, he
got me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked him
some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me;
so I come with him. He told me that I could be his----" She hesitated.

"His amanuensis, perhaps," suggested the old man.

"Which?" she said. "No; it wasn't that way--he didn't say nothin' about
marryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be his
girl--that was all; but he didn't keep his word--no, sir; right from the
very first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I got
here before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a
spell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to another
house--Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?"

The major half nodded, half shook his head.

"By reputation only I know the person in question," he answered a bit
stiffly.

"Well," she went on, "there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sick
lately--I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strengt