ll
make it harder for us to get rid of them. We have no use for men of that
kind in this country."

"No?" said the girl scornfully. "Well, I fancied they would have come in
quite handy--there was a thing you did."

"You heard of that?"

"Yes," very coldly. "It was a horrible thing."

Grant's voice changed to a curious low tone. "Did you ever see me hurt
anything when I could help it in the old days, Hetty?"

"No. One has to be honest; I remember how you once hurt your hand taking a
jack-rabbit out of a trap."

"And how you bound it up?"

"Well," said Hetty, "I don't know, after the work you have done with it,
that I should care to do that now."

"There are affairs you should never hear of and I don't care to talk about
with you," Grant said, very quietly, "but since you have mentioned this
one you must listen to me. Just as it is one's duty to give no needless
pain to anything, so there is an obligation on him to stop any other man
who would do it. Is it wrong to kill a grizzly or a rattlesnake, or
merciful to leave them with their meanness to destroy whatever they want?
Now, if you had known a quiet American who did a tolerably dangerous thing
because he fancied it was right, and found him shot in the back, and the
trail of the man who crept up behind him and killed him for a few dollars,
would you have let that man go?"

Hetty ignored the question. "The man was your friend."

"Well," said Grant slowly, "he had done a good deal for me, but that would
not have counted for very much with any one when we made our decision."

"No?" And Hetty glanced at him with a little astonishment.

Grant shook his head. "No," he said. "We had to do the square thing--that
and nothing more; but if we had let that man go, he would, when the chance
was given him, have done what he did again. Well, it was--horrible; but
there was no law that would do the work for us in this country then."

Hetty shivered, but had there been light enough Grant would have seen the
relief in her face, and as it was his pulse responded to the little quiver
in her voice. Why it was she did not know, but the belief in him which she
had once cherished suddenly returned to her. In the old days the man she
had never thought of as a lover could, at least, do no wrong.

"I understand." Her voice was very gentle. "There must be a good deal of
meanness in me, or I should have known you only did it because you are a
white man, and felt you had to. Oh, of c