“Cousin Bess,” he repeated for the last time tensely, “I can’t let you cry so.  I won’t.  I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too much.  It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I can tell.”  Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced gambler his face went tense and white.  “You must listen to me, Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of you.  I myself will take care of you, girlie.  Listen, Bess, for there’s something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now.”  Swiftly, unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle, could not prevent.  “I love you, little girl.  Though I’ve only known you two days, I love you.  That is what you compel me to tell you.  This is why it hurts me to have you cry so.  I love you, Bess; I love you!”

This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof, came to pass that October morning.  Just so the four living actors remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze:  the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax.  Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself into a man.  Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the close-fitting flannel shirt he wore.  Swiftly, yet still without a sound, one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate—­and again the first.  Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip that all but paralysed.  Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about, put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from whom he had most to fear.  All this in seconds; then, mercifully intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came between.  The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.

“How!  In God’s name don’t!  He didn’t mean any harm; I know he didn’t.  Forgive him, How; please, please,” and repeated:  “Forgive him—­for my sake.”

* * * * *

The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in council.  No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately depressing.  The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table.  The faded rag carpet