esitate a moment.

"Thank you, Nels. Take me at once. Come, Florence."

They left the car, now surrounded by gaping-eyed Mexican children,
and crossed the dusty space to a narrow lane between red adobe walls.
Passing by several houses, Nels stopped at the door of what appeared to
be an alleyway leading back. It was filthy.

"He's in there, around thet first corner. It's a patio, open an' sunny.
An', Miss Hammond, if you don't mind, I'll wait here for you. I reckon
Gene wouldn't like any fellers around when he sees you girls."

It was that which made Madeline hesitate then and go forward slowly.
She had given no thought at all to what Stewart might feel when suddenly
surprised by her presence.

"Florence, you wait also," said Madeline, at the doorway, and turned in
alone.

And she had stepped into a broken-down patio littered with alfalfa straw
and debris, all clear in the sunlight. Upon a bench, back toward her,
sat a man looking out through the rents in the broken wall. He had
not heard her. The place was not quite so filthy and stifling as the
passages Madeline had come through to get there. Then she saw that it
had been used as a corral. A rat ran boldly across the dirt floor.
The air swarmed with flies, which the man brushed at with weary hand.
Madeline did not recognize Stewart. The side of his face exposed to her
gaze was black, bruised, bearded. His clothes were ragged and soiled.
There were bits of alfalfa in his hair. His shoulders sagged. He made a
wretched and hopeless figure sitting there. Madeline divined something
of why Nels shrank from being present.

"Mr. Stewart. It is I, Miss Hammond, come to see you," she said.

He grew suddenly perfectly motionless, as if he had been changed to
stone. She repeated her greeting.

His body jerked. He moved violently as if instinctively to turn and face
this intruder; but a more violent movement checked him.

Madeline waited. How singular that this ruined cowboy had pride which
kept him from showing his face! And was it not shame more than pride?

"Mr. Stewart, I have come to talk with you, if you will let me."

"Go away," he muttered.

"Mr. Stewart!" she began, with involuntary hauteur. But instantly she
corrected herself, became deliberate and cool, for she saw that she
might fail to be even heard by this man. "I have come to help you. Will
you let me?"

"For God's sake! You--you--" he choked over the words. "Go away!"

"Stewart, perhaps it was for