ld have taken Johnnie
Adamson to jail. Those two were a public nuisance every Saturday
afternoon. I'm glad you have ended it. But tell me, what made them pick
on you?"

Don Lane struggled for a time, not daring to look at his mother, before
he spoke. "The half-wit wouldn't let us pass, and then his father called
me a name--if that man or any other ever calls me that again, I'm going
to beat him up till his own people won't know him. I can't tell you," he
went on, flushing.

He did not catch the sudden look which now passed between the two women.
A sudden paleness replaced the flush on Miss Julia's cheek. A horror sat
in her eye. "What does he know?" was the question she asked of Aurora
Lane, eye only speaking the query.

"At least, Miss Julia," said poor Don, "you somehow certainly must know
about me. I'll get all my debts squared around some time. As soon as I
can get settled down in my new place West--I've got a fine engineering
job out in Wyoming already--I'm going to have my mother come. And if
ever I get on in the world, there are some other things I'm not going to
forget. Any friend of hers----" His big hand, waved toward his mother,
told the rest of what he could not speak.

They sat on, uncomfortable, for a time, neither of the three knowing
how much the others knew, nor how much each ought to know. Of the three,
Aurora Lane was most prepared. For twenty years she had been learning to
be prepared. For twenty years she had been praying that her boy never
would know what now he did know.

Don Lane looked at his mother's face, but could not fathom it. Life to
him thus far had been more or less made up of small things--sports,
books, joys, small things, no great ponderings, no problems, no
introspections, no self-communings--and until but very recently no love,
no great emotion, no passion to unsettle him. This shadow which now fell
over him--he could not have suspected that. But his mother all these
years had known that perhaps at any unforeseen time this very hour might
come--had prayed against it, but known always in her heart that it might
come, nay, indeed one day must come.

"Damn the place, anyhow!" he broke out at length. "You've lived here
long enough, both of you. It's nothing but a little gossiping hell,
that's all. I'll take you away from here, both of you, that's what I'll
do!" He stretched out a hand suddenly to his mother, who took it,
stroking it softly.

"Don, boy," said she, "I didn't run