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Cassy got slowly to her feet. “I’ve been as straight a woman as your mother or your wife ever was,” she said, “and all the world knows it. I’m poor–and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I married George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he shared; and I’ve got little left. The mining stock I bought with what I saved went smash, and I’m poor as I was when I started to work for myself. I can work awhile yet; but I wanted to see if I could fit in out here and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his grandfather. That’s the way I’m placed, and that’s how I came. But give a dog a bad name–ah, you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I didn’t ruin him. I didn’t kill him. He never came to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy. Why, I–” She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her mouth. “Go on, say what you want to say, and let’s understand once for all,” she added, with a sudden sharpness.

Abel Baragar drew himself up. “Well, I say this. I’ll give you three thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I’ll keep the boy here. That’s what I’ve fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the boy stays. I ain’t goin’ to live with you that spoiled George’s life.”

The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger, then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy stepped from behind the stove.

“You are going to stay here, Cassy,” he said, “here where you have rights as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that.” He turned to his father. “You thought a lot of George,” he added. “He was the apple of your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George was foolish–I’ve known it all these years. George was pretty foolish. He gambled, he bet at races, he speculated–wild. You didn’t know it. He took ten thousand dollars of your money, got from the Wonegosh farm he sold for you. He–“

Cassy Mavor started forward with a cry, but Black Andy waved her down.

“No, I’m going to tell it. George lost your ten thousand dollars, dad, gambling, racing, speculating. He told her–Cassy–two days after they was married, and she took the money she earned on the stage and give it to him to pay you back on the quiet through the bank. You never knew, but that’s the kind of boy your son George was, and that’s the kind of wife he had. George told me all about it when I went East six years ago.”

He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. “I’m standing by George’s wife,” he said, taking her hand, while she shut her eyes in her misery–had she not hid her husband’s wrong-doing all these years?–“I’m standing by her. If it hadn’t been for that ten thousand dollars she paid back for George, you’d have been swamped, when the Syndicate got after you, and we wouldn’t have had Lumley’s place, nor this, nor anything. I guess she’s got rights here, dad, as good as any.”

The old man sank slowly into a chair. “George–George stole from me–stole money from me!” he whispered. His face was white. His pride and vainglory were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure. His self-righteousness was levelled in the dust.

With sudden impulse Cassy stole over to him and took his hand and held it tight.

“Don’t! Don’t feel so bad!” she said. “He was weak and wild then. But he was all right afterward. He was happy with me.”

“I’ve owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad,” said Black Andy, “and it had to be paid. She’s got better stuff in her than any Baragar.”

* * * * *

An hour later the old man said to Cassy at the door of her room: “You got to stay here and git well. It’s yours, the same as the rest of us–what’s here.”

Then he went down-stairs and sat with Aunt Kate by the fire.

“I guess she’s a good woman,” he said, at last. “I didn’t use her right.”

“You’ve been lucky with your women-folk,” Aunt Kate answered, quietly.

“Yes, I’ve been lucky,” he answered. “I dunno if I deserve it. Mebbe not. Do you think she’ll git well?”

“It’s a healing air out here,” Aunt Kate answered, and listened to the wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost.