“Yes, that’s so, too.  But—­have you any children?”

“Yes, ma’am; that is, they ain’t my own children.  Lizzie and I never had any; but these two we took and they are most like my own.  The girl is eighteen and the boy rising of fourteen.”

“They must be a comfort to you; but they are considerable of a responsibility, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he sighed softly to himself.  “Sometimes I feel I haven’t done the right way by them, though I’ve tried.  Not that they ain’t good children, for they are—­no better anywhere.  Tim, he will work from morning till night, and never need to urge him; and he never gives me a promise he don’t keep it, no ma’am, never did since he was a little mite of a lad.  And he is a kind boy, too, always good to the beasts; and while he may speak up a little short to his sister, he saves her many a step.  He doesn’t take to his studies quite as I would like to have him, but he has a wonderful head for business.  There is splendid stuff in Tim if it could only be worked right.”

While Nelson spoke, Tim was hunching his shoulders forward in the darkness, listening with the whole of two sharp ears.  His face worked in spite of him, and he gave an inarticulate snort.

“Well,” the woman said, “I think that speaks well for Tim.  Why should you be worried about him?”

“I am afraid he is getting to love money and worldly success too well, and that is what I fear for the girl, too.  You see, she is so pretty, and the idols of the tribe and the market, as Bacon calls them, are strong with the young.”

“Yes, that’s so,” the woman assented vaguely, not at all sure what either Bacon or his idols might be.  “Are the children relations of yours?”

“No, ma’am; it was like this:  When I was up in Henry County there came a photographic artist to the village near us, and pitched his tent and took tintypes in his wagon.  He had his wife and his two children with him.  The poor woman fell ill and died; so we took the two children.  My wife was willing; she was a wonderfully good woman, member of the Methodist church till she died.  I—­I am not a church member myself, ma’am; I passed through that stage of spiritual development a long while ago.”  He gave a wistful glance at his companion’s dimly outlined profile.  “But I never tried to disturb her faith; it made her happy.”

“Oh, I don’t think it is any good fooling with other people’s religions,” said the woman, easily.  “It is just like trying to talk folks out of drinking; nobody knows what is right for anybody else’s soul any more than they do what is good for anybody else’s stomach!”

“Yes, ma’am.  You put things very clearly.”

“I guess it is because you understand so quickly. 
But you were saying ------”

“That’s all the story.  We took the children, and their father was killed by the cars the next year, poor man; and so we have done the best we could ever since by them.”