goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a
long hour of human passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free,
then he's got to go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me, if he gets away.
Can't you see what a swab he is, Laura?"

The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between
them was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor
though he was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the
same fashion, that this man was a man of men.

"Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in
the South, and that he had to leave-"

"He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers."

"But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is
a hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't
do what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and
there were other things he said he could do, and he didn't do them.
Perhaps he is all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some
good things, and through him I've felt as I've never felt before about
God and life, and about Walt and the baby--as though I'll see them
again, sure. I've never felt that before. It was all as if they were
lost in the hills, and no trail home, or out to where they are. Like as
not God was working in him all the time, Tim; and he failed because he
counted too much on the little he had, and made up for what he hadn't by
what he pretended."

"He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or that lot down there"--he
jerked a finger towards the town--"but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer--"

A flash of humour shot into her eyes at his last words, then they
filled with tears, through which the smile shone. To pretend to "a
Pioneer"--the splendid vanity and egotism of the West!

"He didn't pretend to me, Tim. People don't usually have to pretend to
like me."

"You know what I'm driving at."

"Yes, yes, I know. And whatever he is, you've said that you will
save him. I'm straight, you know that. Somehow, what I felt from his
preaching--well, everything got sort of mixed up with him, and he
was--was different. It was like the long dream of Walt and the baby, and
he a part of it. I don't know what I felt, or what I might have felt
for him. I'm a woman--I can't understand. But I know what I feel now.
I never want to see him again on earth--or in Heaven. It needn't be
necessary even in Heaven; but what happened between God and me through
him stays, T