on, "an' I covered my trail, and no man ever knew what I found in Ben's shaft-no man but one-"

"And he?" Hester spoke with a sudden piercing anxiety.

"He!" screamed the other furiously. "He's the man as wants to buy the shaft from Horton. I was a thief-you said so. But damn him! He wore fine clothes-an' paid me for stealing. An' he meant to buy the shaft then, an'-an'-" A slow, intense anger burned in the words as they fell from his lips. "The boys whipped me because a gentleman-an honest man-when English Jack missed lead from Denny's pile, whispered that I was the thief. An' he set 'em on me—an' he was in the bowlin' alley, an' saw 'em cut the locust branches-an'

Hester came before him with a white face of despair, and looked straight into his

eyes.

"He was-?" The suffering of a whole lifetime seemed compressed in this one broken question.

You rode

when I saw you coming down it.
very fast. Did you lame your horse?"
The stranger was puzzled.

"Me?" he answered. "Me ride down the old Indian trail! I never come down there any time, let alone last night."

The man rose. He looked at Hester hesitatingly, and at Salome with an expression of something akin to compassion.

"There's one more promise I want you to make,” he said—“but I forget; you haven't made me any promise yet. You buy Old Ben's cabin and the little garden to the south -you, Hester Holland. Will you make me this one promise me, that have come so far to serve you? It ain't worth much, but if you would buy it I'd know you didn't quite despise the wish, even of a no-account chap like me."

"I promise!" said Hester, deeply impressed by the almost painful humility that marked the request.

A brightness came into his face. "Somehow, I think," he said, "this isn't our last

A strange tenderness checked the passion of the gaunt man before them. With pathetic earnestness, he evaded her question.

"I told you then," he said, "I'd not for get your day's work. What matter who he was?"

The pale woman fronting him shrank away with a new-born terror from him, and still more visibly from Salome, mute and watchful, at her side. She could not have explained why, but for the first time the aversion the child had excited in Lila appeared transferred to her. As if she fathomed these feelings, Salome loosened her grasp on her slender arm, and faced the stranger resolutely.

"Last night," she said, "the children were playing out there." She pointed to the street. "The sunset was red on the old Indian trail,

want to ask ye." He took her slim white hand; "Good bye," he said. His voice faltered a second. "Do you think," he said brokenly, "anything low and mean-even as low and mean as a thief-could ever get the welts on his soul scarred over?"

He was gone, and left her with a heart newly torn with pain. The rain was over; the moon broke through its rim of ragged clouds; the myriad voices of the night awoke more rampantly than ever in the pauses of the sighing, fitful breeze. Hester felt Salome's light touch upon her arm. All her transient hostility died away, as she looked at her in the dim candle light. She bent down impulsively and kissed her, in voiceless appeal for forgiveness. All her old serene life seemed abruptly swept away from her. In her disturbed and troubled condition of mind, there remained one earthly comfort-one support. It was-Salome. Ada Langworthy Collier.