into insignificance compared with what you went an' done, for you
broke an innercent an' trustin' heart an' hell's too good for a
man that'll pull a trick like that."

"Scraggsy, Scraggsy, Scraggsy," Mr. Gibney protested. "Them's
awful hard words."

"I can't help it. You told me to speak out an' I'm a-doin' it.
You hooks up with this unsophisticated, trustful woman--she ain't
a woman; she's a young girl at the time--an' she ain't civilized
enough to be on to your kind. So you finds it easy to make her
love you. Not with the common sordid love of a white woman but
with the fierce, undyin' passion o' the South Seas. An' when you
get her in your clutches, her an' her whole possessions an' she's
yours body an' bones, in the sight o' God an' the sight o'
man--you ups an' leaves her! You throw her down like she's so
much dirt an' leave her to die of a broken heart. An' she'd
a-done it, too, if it hadn't a' been for the children."

Captain Scraggs was fairly thunderin' his denunciation as he
concluded with: "You--you murderer! Ain't you ashamed of
yourself?"

Mr. Gibney, thoroughly crushed, hung his head. "If there was
kids, Scraggsy," he pleaded, "they wasn't mine, not that I knows
on."

"I ain't sayin' you don't speak the truth there, Gib. Maybe you
don't know that part of it, because you left before they was
born. Yes, sir, that gal had two twins--a boy an' a girl an' both