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The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. The girl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feet dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-cornered break in the dirty-gray plastering.

“You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don’t you?–about him bein’ found shot day before yistiddy evenin’ in the mouth of that alley?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Though I was not personally acquainted with the man himself, I am familiar with the circumstances you mention.”

“Well,” she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, “it was me that done it!”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, half doubting whether he had heard aright, “but what was it you said you did?”

“Shot him!” she answered–“I was the one that shot him–with this thing here.” She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out a short-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically he took it, and thereafter for a space he held it in his hands. The girl went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate eagerness.

“I didn’t mean to do it, though–God knows I didn’t mean to do it! He treated me mighty sorry–it was lowdown and mean all the way through, the way he done me–but I didn’t mean him no real harm. I was only aimin’ to skeer him into doin’ the right thing by me. It was accidental-like–it really was, mister! In all my life I ain’t never intentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody’s forever and a day imposin’ on me!” She quavered with the puny passion of her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with rods.

Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn’t think of the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.

“I’m goin’ to tell you the whole story, jest like it was,” she went on in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a long way off. “That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin’ shameful. He come to the town where I was livin’ to make a speech in a political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was workin’ in a hotel there–one of the dinin’ room help. That was two years ago this comin’ September. Well, the next day, when he left, he got me to come ‘long with him. He said he’d look after me. I liked him some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin’ to do for me; so I come with him. He told me that I could be his—-” She hesitated.

“His amanuensis, perhaps,” suggested the old man.

“Which?” she said. “No; it wasn’t that way–he didn’t say nothin’ about marryin’ me and I didn’t expect him to. He told me that I should be his girl–that was all; but he didn’t keep his word–no, sir; right from the very first he broke his word to me! It wasn’t more’n a month after I got here before he quit comin’ to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a spell longer at the house where I was livin’ and then I went to another house–Vic Magner’s. You know who she is, I reckin?”

The major half nodded, half shook his head.

“By reputation only I know the person in question,” he answered a bit stiffly.

“Well,” she went on, “there ain’t so much more to tell. I’ve been sick lately–I had a right hard spell. I ain’t got my strength all back yit. I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jest barely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me that I’d have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for my board. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn’t have but nine dollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it all or nothin’. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I was mighty weak and discouraged–I was so! I didn’t know what to do.