s bad
natures often will realize in others better than themselves, Eve's
loyalty and high-mindedness. It could not be that. He wondered. And
wondering they reached their destination.

Peter let him pass into the hut, and, following quickly, lit the lamp.
Then he pointed at the only comfortable seat, and propped himself
against the table, with the light shining full on Will's face.

"Will," he began, without any preamble, "you've got to take a
fall--quick. You've got to get such a big fall that maybe it'll hurt
some--at first. But you'll get better--later."

"I don't get you."

The man assumed indifference. He felt that he must steady himself. He
wanted to get the measure of the other before giving vent to those
feelings which were natural to him since drink had undermined all that
was best in him.

"You've nearly killed your wife to-night," Peter went on, with a new
note of harshness in his voice. "Look you, I'm not going to preach.
It's not our way here, and none of us are such a heap good that
preaching comes right from us. I'm warning you, and it's a warning
you'll take right here, or worse'll come. Now I don't know the rights
of what has happened between you and Eve, but I'll sort of reconstruct
it to you in my own way, and it matters nothing if I am right or
wrong. Eve and you had words. What about I can only guess at. Maybe it
was money, maybe the saloon, maybe poker. You two must have got to
words, which ended by you brutally pitching her on to the edge of the
coal box, and nearly killing her. After that you went out, leaving her
to die--by your act--if it took her that way. Mark you, she didn't
fall. She couldn't have--and smashed her forehead as she did. She told
us she did, but that, I guess, was to shield you."

"Then she didn't give you this pretty yarn?" inquired Will,
sarcastically. He was feeling better. He gathered that Eve was not
going to die. "You kind of made it up on your own?"

"Just so," replied Peter, quite unmoved. "I--we--Doc Crombie, Jim
Thorpe, and I. We made it up, as you choose to call it, because we've
eyes and ears and common sense. And Doc Crombie knows just about how
much force it would take to smash her head as it was smashed."

"And what were you fellows doing in my house?" Will demanded, his
anger gaining ground in proportion to the abatement of his fears.

"We were in _Eve's_ house," answered Peter, drily, "for the reason
that we wished to have a chat with her. That is, J