“Why didn’t you think about getting yourself some new clothes, like any other woman would?” asked Jose, eyeing her curiously.

“What I got’s good enough for me,” she returned shortly.

“You should have gave your place a nice cleaning and cooked a little for a change, Sadie,” said Mrs. Thomas softly and virtuously.

“Such things look worse’n dying to me,” replied the gipsy.  “And,” turning again to Gallito, “the taste goin’ out of my tea and coffee wasn’t the worst.  It went out of my pipe, too.  Gosh a’mighty, Gallito!  I’ll never forget the night I sat beside my dyin’ fire and felt that I didn’t even take no interest in winnin’ their money from the boys; and then suddenly most like a voice from outside somep’n in me says:  ’What’s the matter with you, Sadie Nitschkan, is that you’re a reapin’ the harvest you’ve sowed, gipsyin’ and junketin’, fightin’ and gamblin’ with no thought of the serious side of life?’”

“And what is the serious side of life, Nitschkan?” asked Jose, sipping delicately his glass of wine as if to taste to the full its ambrosial flavors, like the epicure he was.  “I have not yet discovered it.”

“You will soon.”  There was meaning in the gipsy’s tone and in the glance she bestowed upon him.  “It’s doin’ good.  I tell you boys when I realized that I’d probably have to change myself within and without and be like some of the pious folks I’d seen, it give me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach.  But you can’t keep me down, and after I’d saw I was a sinner and repented ’cause I was so bad, I saw that the whole trouble was this, I’d tried everything else, but I hadn’t never tried doin’ good.”

“No, Sadie, you sure hadn’t made duty the watch-word of your life,” agreed Mrs. Thomas.

Mrs. Nitschkan ignored this.  “Now doin’ good, for I know you don’t know what that means, Jose, is seein’ the right path and makin’ other folks walk in it whether they’re a mind to or not.  Well I cert’ny gave the sinners of Zenith a run for their money.”

She smoked a moment or two in silence, sunk in agreeable remembrance.  She had been true to her word and, having decided to reform as much of the community as in her estimation needed that trial as by fire, she had plunged into her self-appointed task with lusty enthusiasm.  As soon as her conversion and the outlet she had chosen for her superabundant energy were noised abroad, there was an immediate and noticeable change in the entire deportment of the camp.  Those long grown careless drew forth their old morals and manners, brushed the moths from them, burnished the rust and wore them with undeniable self-consciousness, but without ostentation.

Upon these lukewarm and conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye.  It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom she concentrated her energies.

“So you see, Gallito,” rousing herself from pleasant contemplation of past triumphs, “it wasn’t only a chance to hunt and prospect that brought me.  I heard from Bob Flick that Jose was still here and I see a duty before me.”