tank; the little row of so-called "pool parlors," cheap restaurants,
saloons and gambling houses, the post-office, a drug store, a tiny
school-house with a belfry and no bell and the little row of cottages
west of the main-line tracks where all the _good_ people lived--
which conglomerate mass of inchoate architecture is all that saved San
Pasqual from the ignominy of being classed as a flag station.

We are informed that the _good_ people lived west of the tracks.
East of the tracks it was different. The past tense is used with a full
appreciation of the necessity for grammatical construction, for times
have changed in San Pasqual, since it is no longer encumbered with the
incubus that made this story possible--Harley P. Hennage, the town
gambler and the worst man in San Pasqual.

Close to the main-line tracks and midway between both strata of society
stood San Pasqual's limited social and civic center--the railroad hotel
and eating-house. Here, between the arrival and departure of all
through trains, the San Pasqualians met on neutral ground, experiencing
mild mental relaxation watching the waitresses ministering to the
gastronomic necessities of the day-coach tourists from the Middle West.
At the period in which the action of this story takes place, however,
most people preferred to find relief from the aching desolation of San
Pasqual and its environs in the calm, restful, spiritual face of Donna
Corblay.

Donna was the young lady cashier at the combination news stand, cigar
and tobacco emporium and pay-as-you-leave counter in the eating-house.
She was more than that. She was an institution. She was the day hotel
clerk; the joy and despair of traveling salesmen who made it a point of
duty to get off at San Pasqual and eat whether they were hungry or not;