onk she had
never seemed so adorable before, not even on still Sabbath afternoons in
the quiet corner of the cemetery where they talked as friends of
mother-love and God, and Life after life.

"Friends, this old hermit fisherman is telling you a falsehood to try to
shield me because of some favor my father showed him in the years gone
by. If he is not willing to say more, to tell you the real truth, he
will force me to say to you that I am the guilty one after all. I cannot
let him make such a sacrifice for me."

She spoke as though she were explaining the necessity for changing cars
in Chicago in order to reach Montreal. Old Fishin' Teddy lifted his
clubby brown hands in protest.

"'Tain't so, an' 'tain't right," he managed to make the words come
out--thin and trembling words, shaking like palsied things.

"No, it isn't so, and it isn't right, and he must not bear a disgrace he
doesn't deserve. I'll do it for him," Jerry said, smiling upon the
shabby old man--a common grub of the Sage Brush Valley.

There is nothing grander in human history, nothing which can more deeply
touch the common human heart of us all, than the lesson of
self-sacrifice taught on Mount Calvary. From the thief on the cross,
down through all the centuries, has the blessed power of that Spirit
softened the hearts of evil-doers, great or small. Jerry had not once
turned toward Stellar Bahrr since the entrance of Fishin' Teddy. When
she had ceased speaking, the silence of the room was broken by the town
busybody's whining tone:

"They ain't neither one of 'em a thief, Mr. Ponk. It's me. They sha'n't
do no such sacrificing thing."

The silence of the moment before was a shout compared to the dead
silence now.

"Yes, it's me. I was born that way, an' it just seems I can't help it.
I've done all the liftin', I guess, that's been done in this town
a'most--'tain't so much, of course; but I ain't mean clear through, an'
I jus' wouldn't ever rest in my grave if I don't speak now. I thought
I'd always hide it, but I know I never will."

Old Teddy shrank back in a heap on his chair, while all of the rest
except Jerry Swaim sat as if thunderstruck.

"I'm goin' clear through with it, now I've begun. Maybe I'll be a better
woman if I am disgraced forever by it." Mrs. Bahrr's voice grew steadier
and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Hans Theodore--the last part of his name is Bahrr--he's my husband. It
was for my sins that he left Pennsylvany. Ji