“Not by a d——­d sight,” he burst out; “but I care for his!  I’m not goin’ to let any man call him a bastard!”

Callous as she had become even under this last cruel blow, she could not but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before!  Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had his own contemptible sense of honor?  A hysterical feeling came over her hitherto passive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next sentence in a haze of anxiety.  “No!” he said hoarsely, “he had enough wrong done him already.”

“What do you mean?” she said imploringly.  “Or are you again lying?  You said, four years ago, that he had ‘got into trouble;’ that was your excuse for keeping him from me.  Or was that a lie, too?”

His manner changed and softened, but not for any pity for his companion, but rather from some change in his own feelings.  “Oh, that,” he said, with a rough laugh, “that was only a kind o’ trouble any sassy kid like him was likely to get into.  You ain’t got no call to hear that, for,” he added, with a momentary return to his previous manner, “the wrong that was done him is my lookout!  You want to know what I did with him, how he’s been looked arter, and where he is?  You want the worth of your money.  That’s square enough.  But first I want you to know, though you mayn’t believe it, that every red cent you’ve given me to-night goes to him.  And don’t you forget it.”

For all his vulgar frankness she knew he had lied to her many times before,—­maliciously, wantonly, complacently, but never evasively; yet there was again that something in his manner which told her he was now telling the truth.

“Well,” he began, settling himself back in his chair, “I told you I brought him to Heavy Tree Hill.  After I left you I wasn’t going to trust him to no school; he knew enough for me; but when I left those parts where nobody knew you, and got a little nearer ’Frisco, where people might have known us both, I thought it better not to travel round with a kid o’ that size as his father.  So I got a young fellow here to pass him off as his little brother, and look after him and board him; and I paid him a big price for it, too, you bet!  You wouldn’t think it was a man who’s now swelling around here, the top o’ the pile, that ever took money from a brute like me, and for such schoolmaster work, too; but he did, and his name was Van Loo, a clerk of the Ditch Company.”

“Van Loo!” said the woman, with a movement of disgust; “That man!”

“What’s the matter with Van Loo?” he said, with a coarse laugh, enjoying his wife’s discomfiture.  “He speaks French and Spanish, and you oughter hear the kid roll off the lingo he’s got from him.  He’s got style, and knows how to dress, and you ought to see the kid bow and scrape, and how he carries himself.  Now, Van Loo wasn’t exactly my style, and I reckon I don’t hanker after him much, but he served my purpose.”