them even when he was
trampling on them and they knew it. It got him into trouble there with
two girls at once. One was the girl that gave him his start, the chance
to go into her uncle's office. He was the biggest man in the town. Older
than Everard, this girl was, and teaching in the school he went to, when
she fell in love with him and brought him home to her town and gave him
his chance. He was tired of her, and she was where it was bound to come
out soon how things were with them, and so was the other girl, a girl
that he wasn't tired of, the daughter of the woman where he boarded. He
tried to get her to go away with him. She wouldn't go and she wouldn't
forgive him, but the town was getting too hot for him, and he had to go.

"He had to go quick and make a clean getaway and he wanted a real start
this time. He had to have money. That was a dead little town. There was
only one place he could get money enough, in the little hotel there. It
was the only bank they had. The keeper of it used to cash checks and
make loans. Everard was lucky, the same then as now. There was almost
five thousand dollars in the safe in the hotel office the night he broke
into it, and that was enough for him. He had a fight with the hotel
clerk, but he got away with the money, and he got away from the town.

"The clerk was his best friend in town--never trusted him, but fell for
him the same as the girls and lent him money and listened to his
troubles--and fell for him again when he ran across him again, years
later, here in Green River. Everard told him he'd sent the money back,
and he kept the secret. He never took hush money for it like Charlie. He
said Everard ought to have his chance, and was straight now. But he fell
for Everard again, that's what happened. Everard had him, the same as
the rest of you.

"The clerk was my father."

The boy's voice broke off. There was dead silence in the hall. Green
River had been listening almost in silence, and did not break it now.
Presently the boy sighed, shrugged his thin shoulders as if they were
throwing off an actual weight, and spoke again, this time in a lifeless
voice, with all the colour and drama wiped out of it, a voice that was
very tired.

"That's all," he said. "That's back of him, with his fine airs and his
far-reaching schemes and his big name in the state. You've stood for a
crook. Will you stand for a common criminal, a common thief? Now you
know and it's up to you. That's al