n-rimmed spectacles.
Then I hesitated. I had been so sure of finding Mother Spurlock at home
and having her hunt up Martha for me that I found it difficult to adjust
myself to my first complexity of plans. And while I hesitated a resolve
came into my mind with the completeness of a spoken direction.

"She lives at the Last Chance and I'll go right down there and find
her," I said to myself, as I started along the peony-bordered path to
the front gate of the Little House, over which a huge late snowball was
drooping, loaded down with snowy balls that would hold their own until
almost the time for frost. At my own decision I had a delicious little
feeling of fear, which was at least justifiable when I thought of that
huge drunken figure wrestling with Billy in the darkness and whom I
knew to be the proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to
penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the
Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should
become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and
tumble-down mill cottages which I had never really seen before, where it
seemed to me millions of children swarmed in and around and about, and
at last arrived at the infamous social center of the Settlement.

And my astonishment was profound to find that the Last Chance sign hung
over a very prosperous grocery with boxes and barrels of provender out
on the pavement under an awning and with huge, newly-painted screen
doors guarding the wide entrance, at which I hesitated.

"Come right in, lady, come right in," called a cheerful, booming man's
voice, and the door was swung open by a large man in a white apron, with
blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, a wide smile and white hair.
"What can we do for you to-day? We've a nice lot of late dewberries just
in from over on Paradise Ridge."

"I'm--I'm looking for the--the Last Chance Saloon," I faltered, because
I was too astonished to utter anything but the truth to the delightful
and tenderly solicitous man standing before me in his huge, clean white
apron over his blue shirt that matched his eyes.

"Well, lady," the nice Irish voice faltered a trifle, about as mine had,
though plainly with controlled astonishment tinged with amusement,
"could I get you anything to--to cool you off and bring it out here in
the grocery? It is cooler than it is back at the bar. I said to myself
jest last week, so I did, I said to myse