, and the shrew wrinkles
were deeper. She swept Josiah with a hostile, withering stare.

"Do you think your father would stop work to talk to tramps?" she
demanded of the boy, who visibly quailed, even as Josiah.

"I was only answering his questions," Johnnie pleaded doggedly but
hopelessly. "He wanted to know--"

"And I suppose you told him," she snapped. "What business is it of his
prying around? No, and he gets nothing to eat. As for you, get to work
at once. I'll teach you, idling at your chores. Your father wa'n't like
that. Can't I ever make you like him?"

Johnnie bent his back, and the bucksaw resumed its protesting skreek.
Agatha surveyed Josiah sourly. It was patent she did not recognise him.

"You be off," she commanded harshly. "None of your snooping around
here."

Josiah felt the numbness of paralysis creeping over him. He moistened
his lips and tried to say something, but found himself bereft of speech.

"You be off, I say," she rasped in her high-keyed voice, "or I'll put
the constable after you."

Josiah turned obediently. He heard the door slam as he went down the
walk. As in a nightmare he opened the gate he had opened ten thousand
times and stepped out on the sidewalk. He felt dazed. Surely it was a
dream. Very soon he would wake up with a sigh of relief. He rubbed his
forehead and paused indecisively. The monotonous complaint of the
bucksaw came to his ears. If that boy had any of the old Childs spirit
in him, sooner or later he'd run away. Agatha was beyond the endurance
of human flesh. She had not changed, unless for the worse, if such a
thing were possible. That boy would surely run for it, maybe soon. Maybe
now.

Josiah Childs straightened up and threw his shoulders back. The
great-spirited West, with its daring and its carelessness of
consequences when mere obstacles stand in the way of its desire, flamed
up in him. He looked at his watch, remembered the time table, and spoke
to himself, solemnly, aloud. It was an affirmation of faith:

"I don't care a hang about the law. That boy can't be crucified. I'll
give her a double allowance, four times, anything, but he goes with me.
She can follow on to California if she wants, but I'll draw up an
agreement, in which what's what, and she'll sign it, and live up to it,
by George, if she wants to stay. And she will," he added grimly. "She's
got to have somebody to nag."

He opened the gate and strode back to the woodshed door. Johnnie looked