much to conserve his emotion, as had the rural isolation in which
he lived. In a city life the four years would probably have
blotted out her memory; but where comparison was impossible, and
lighter distractions almost unheard of, what chance was there for
him to forget the single passionate experience he had known?
Among his primitive neighbours Maria had flitted for a time like
a bewildering vision; then the great distant world had caught her
up into its brightness, and the desolate waste country was become
the guardian of the impression she had left.

"If thar's a man who has had bad luck with his children, it's
Bill Fletcher," old Jacob was saying thoughtfully. "He's been a
hard man an' a mean one, too, an' when he couldn't beg or borrow
it's my opinion that he never hesitated to put forth his hand an'
steal. Thar's a powerful lot of judgment in dumb happenin's, an'
when you see a family waste out an' run to seed like that it
usually means that the good Lord is havin' His way about matters.
It takes a mighty sharp eye to tell the difference between
judgment an' misfortune, an' I've seen enough in this world to
know that, no matter how skilfully you twist up good an' evil,
God Almighty may be a long time in the unravelling, but He'll
straighten 'em out at last. Now as to Bill Fletcher, his sins got
in the bone an' they're workin' out in the blood. Look at his son
Bill--didn't he come out of the army to drink himself to death?
Then his granddaughter Maria has gone an' mismarried a somebody,
an' this boy that he'd set his heart on is goin' to the devil so
precious fast that he ain't got time to look behind him."

"Oh, he's young yet," suggested Tom Spade, solemnly wagging his
head, "an' Fletcher says, you know, that he's all right so long