comfort. From the agony of her
soul but one thought leaped forth--to make the comfort real, to find out
how to raise herself from her sin, to become worthy of the goodness
which she had that morning for the first time clearly seen. She sprang
forward and seized the preacher's arm. Interrupted in his ecstasy, he
rolled his eyes down on her but half comprehending.

"How? How?" she gasped. "Help me! What must I do?"

She held out her empty hands with a gesture of appeal. The old man's
mind still burned with the fever of his fanatical inspiration. He hardly
saw her, and did not understand all the import of her words. He looked
at her vacantly, and caught sight of her outstretched hands.

"'And to work with your hands as we command you,'" he quoted vaguely,
then shook himself free of her detaining grasp and marched grandly on,
rolling out the mighty syllables of the psalms.

"To work with my hands; to work with my hands," the woman repeated
looking at her outspread palms. "Yes, that is it!" she said, slowly.

* * * * *

Anne Bingham washed dishes at the Prairie Dog Hotel for a week. The
first day was one of visions; the second one of irksomeness; the third
one of wearisome monotony. The first was as long as it takes to pass
from one shore to the other of the great dream-sea; the second was an
age; the third an eternity. The first was rose-hued; the second was
dull; the third was filled with the grayness that blurs activity turned
to mechanical action.

And on the eighth day occurred the monthly pay-day dance of the Last
Chance mine. All the men were drunk, all the women were drunker, but
drunkest of all was the undoubted favourite of the company, Bismarck
Anne. Two men standing by the door saw nothing remarkable about that--it
had happened the last week. But in that time Bismarck Anne had had her
chance, she had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, and so now was in mortal
sin.

THE END

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THE McCLURE PRESS, NEW YORK

STANDARD FICTION

A selected list of the Standard Fiction published by McClure, Phillips
and Company, 44-60 East 23d St., N. Y.

Cloth, 12mo. Each $1.50, unless otherwise indicated.

ADE, GEORGE
IN BABEL

BURGESS, GELETT [with WILL IRWIN]
THE REIGN OF QUEEN ISYL
THE PICAROONS

CONRAD, JOSEPH
LORD JIM
YOUTH
FALK
ROMANCE [with F.M. HUEFFER]. Illustrated.

CROCKETT, S.