He spoke with pain and shame in his voice and attitude.  “There isn’t anything that I could do for you, Ann, that I wouldn’t do as it is, without you pretending that way.”

She did not quite take it in at first that she could not deceive him.

“I thought you used to care about me,” she said; “I thought perhaps you did yet; I thought perhaps”—­she put well-feigned shyness into her tone—­“that you weren’t the sort that would turn away from us just because of what father has done.  All the other folks will, of course.  I’m pretty much alone.”

“I won’t help you to break the laws, Ann.  Law and righteousness is the same for the most part.  Your feeling as a daughter leads you the other way, of course; but it ain’t no good—­it won’t do any good to him in the long run, and it would be wrong for me to do anything but just what I ought to do as constable.  When that’s done we can talk of being friends if you like, but don’t go acting a lie with the hope of getting the better of me.  It hurts me to see you do it, Ann.”

For the first time there dawned in her mind a new respect for him, but that did not alter her desperate resolve.  She had been standing before him in the moonlight with downcast face; now she suddenly threw up her head with a gesture that reminded him of the way a drowning man throws up his hands.

“You’ve been wanting to convert me,” she said.  “You want me to sign the pledge, and to stop going to dances and playing cards, and to bring up Christa that way.”

All the thoughts that he had had since his reform of what he could do for this girl and her sister if she would only let him came before his heart now, lit through and through with the light of his love that at that moment renewed its strength with a power which appalled him.

She took a few steps nearer to him.

“Father didn’t mean to do any harm,” she whispered hastily; “he’s got no more sin on his soul than a child that gets angry and fights for what it wants.  He’s just like a child, father is; but it’s been a lesson to him, and he’ll never do it again.  Think of the shame to Christa and me if he was hanged.  And I’ve striven so to keep us respectable—­Bart, you know I have.  There’s no shame in the world like your father being——­” (there was a nervous gasp in her throat before she could go on)—­“and he’d be awfully frightened.  Oh, you don’t know how frightened he’d be!  If I thought they were going to do that to him, it would just kill me.  I’ll do anything; I wouldn’t mind so much if they’d take me and hang me instead—­it wouldn’t scare me so much:  but father would be just like a child, crying and crying and crying, if they kept him in jail and were going to do that in the end.  And then no one would expect Christa and me to have any more fun, and we never would have any.  There’s a way that you can get father off, Bart, and give him at least one more chance to run for his life.  If you’ll do it, I’ll do whatever you want,—­I’ll sign the pledge; I’ll go to church; I’ll teach Christa that way.  She and I won’t dance any more.  You can count on me.  You can trust me.  You know that when I say a thing I’ll do it.”