hink about getting yourself some new clothes, like any
other woman would?" asked Jose, eyeing her curiously.

"What I got's good enough for me," she returned shortly.

"You should have gave your place a nice cleaning and cooked a little for
a change, Sadie," said Mrs. Thomas softly and virtuously.

"Such things look worse'n dying to me," replied the gipsy. "And,"
turning again to Gallito, "the taste goin' out of my tea and coffee
wasn't the worst. It went out of my pipe, too. Gosh a'mighty, Gallito!
I'll never forget the night I sat beside my dyin' fire and felt that I
didn't even take no interest in winnin' their money from the boys; and
then suddenly most like a voice from outside somep'n in me says: 'What's
the matter with you, Sadie Nitschkan, is that you're a reapin' the
harvest you've sowed, gipsyin' and junketin', fightin' and gamblin' with
no thought of the serious side of life?'"

"And what is the serious side of life, Nitschkan?" asked Jose, sipping
delicately his glass of wine as if to taste to the full its ambrosial
flavors, like the epicure he was. "I have not yet discovered it."

"You will soon." There was meaning in the gipsy's tone and in the
glance she bestowed upon him. "It's doin' good. I tell you boys when I
realized that I'd probably have to change myself within and without and
be like some of the pious folks I'd seen, it give me a gone feeling in
the pit of my stomach. But you can't keep me down, and after I'd saw I
was a sinner and repented 'cause I was so bad, I saw that the whole
trouble was this, I'd tried everything else, but I hadn't never tried
doin' good."

"No, Sadie, you sure hadn't made duty the watch-word of your life,"
agreed Mrs. Thomas.

Mrs. Nitschkan ignored this. "Now doin' good, for I know you don't know
what that means, Jose, is seein' the right path and makin' other folks
walk in it whether they're a mind to or not. Well I cert'ny gave the
sinners of Zenith a run for their money."

She smoked a moment or two in silence, sunk in agreeable remembrance.
She had been true to her word and, having decided to reform as much of
the community as in her estimation needed that trial as by fire, she had
plunged into her self-appointed task with lusty enthusiasm. As soon as
her conversion and the outlet she had chosen for her superabundant
energy were noised abroad, there was an immediate and noticeable change
in the entire deportment of the camp. Those long grown careless drew
for