o say one word to her detriment, even if she knew
the women's accusations to be true. In fact, in a wave of sentimental
emotion, she rather hoped they were true. Eve deserved a little
happiness, and, if it lay in her power to help her to any, she would
certainly not hesitate to offer her services.

To Eve, fighting her lonely battle in the solitude of her small home,
amidst the cloth and trimmings of her trade, the sight of Annie's
cheerful, friendly face always had a rousing effect. She lived from
day to day in a world of grinding fear. Her mind was never clear of it
now. And she clung to her work as being the only possible thing. She
dared not go out more than she was actually obliged for fear of
hearing the news she dreaded. There was nothing to be done but wait
for the sword to fall.

But these last three days her fears had been divided, and she found
herself torn in two different directions by them. Where before it had
always been her husband, now, ever since the night of Jim Thorpe's
going, he was rarely out of her thoughts. Now, even more than at the
time when she first understood the sacrifice he was about to make for
her. And the nobleness of it appealed to her simple woman's mind as
something sublime. He was a branded man before, but now, so long as he
remained in Barnriff, or wherever he met a man who had lived in
Barnriff at this time, so long as Will escaped capture, the pointing
finger would be able to mark honest Jim Thorpe as a--cattle-thief. He
was powerless to do more than deny it. The horror of it was dreadful.

He had done it for her. And her woman's heart told her why. Her
thoughts flew back to those days, such a little way back, yet, to her,
so far, far away, when his kind serious eyes used to look into hers in
their gentle caressing fashion, when his unready tongue used to halt
over speaking those nice things a woman, in her simple vanity, loves
to hear from a man she likes. She thought of the little presents he
used to make her so awkwardly, all prompted by his great, golden,
loving heart.

And she had passed him by for that other. The man with the ready,
specious tongue, with the buoyant, self-satisfied air, with the
bright, merry eyes of one who knows his power with women, who rarely
fails to win, and, having won easily, no longer cares for his
plaything. But she had loved Will then, and had Jim been an angel sent
straight from heaven he could not then have taken her from him.

But now? A