“Russ, for the present help me do something for Jim Hoden’s family,” went on Steele.  “His wife’s in bad shape.  She’s not a strong woman.  There are a lot of kids, and you know Jim Hoden was poor.  She told me her neighbors would keep shy of her now.  They’d be afraid.  Oh, it’s tough!  But we can put Jim away decently and help his family.”

Several days after this talk with Steele I took Miss Sampson and Sally out to see Jim Hoden’s wife and children.  I knew Steele would be there that afternoon, but I did not mention this fact to Miss Sampson.  We rode down to the little adobe house which belonged to Mrs. Hoden’s people, and where Steele and I had moved her and the children after Jim Hoden’s funeral.  The house was small, but comfortable, and the yard green and shady.

If this poor wife and mother had not been utterly forsaken by neighbors and friends it certainly appeared so, for to my knowledge no one besides Steele and me visited her.  Miss Sampson had packed a big basket full of good things to eat, and I carried this in front of me on the pommel as we rode.  We hitched our horses to the fence and went round to the back of the house.  There was a little porch with a stone flooring, and here several children were playing.  The door stood open.  At my knock Mrs. Hoden bade me come in.  Evidently Steele was not there, so I went in with the girls.

“Mrs. Hoden, I’ve brought Miss Sampson and her cousin to see you,” I said cheerfully.

The little room was not very light, there being only one window and the door; but Mrs. Hoden could be seen plainly enough as she lay, hollow-cheeked and haggard, on a bed.  Once she had evidently been a woman of some comeliness.  The ravages of trouble and grief were there to read in her worn face; it had not, however, any of the hard and bitter lines that had characterized her husband’s.

I wondered, considering that Sampson had ruined Hoden, how Mrs. Hoden was going to regard the daughter of an enemy.

“So you’re Roger Sampson’s girl?” queried the woman, with her bright black eyes fixed on her visitor.

“Yes,” replied Miss Sampson, simply.  “This is my cousin, Sally Langdon.  We’ve come to nurse you, take care of the children, help you in any way you’ll let us.”

There was a long silence.

“Well, you look a little like Sampson,” finally said Mrs. Hoden, “but you’re not at all like him.  You must take after your mother.  Miss Sampson, I don’t know if I can—­if I ought to accept anything from you.  Your father ruined my husband.”

“Yes, I know,” replied the girl sadly.  “That’s all the more reason you should let me help you.  Pray don’t refuse.  It will—­mean so much to me.”

If this poor, stricken woman had any resentment it speedily melted in the warmth and sweetness of Miss Sampson’s manner.  My idea was that the impression of Diane Sampson’s beauty was always swiftly succeeded by that of her generosity and nobility.  At any rate, she had started well with Mrs. Hoden, and no sooner had she begun to talk to the children than both they and the mother were won.