vice.

"I took a rig and I started to drive over. I got caught in the rain and
lost the road. I've been miles out of my way, and used up three horses,
but I was bound to come. And I'm here to take my medicine."

"I see," said the judge. "Well, Morgan, I think it was the voice of
conscience that you heard, but you're no more to blame than any of us, I
suppose, because you failed to recognize it. Few of us pay enough
attention to it to let it bother us that way."

"Believe me or not, it wasn't any pipe-dream!" said Morgan, so earnestly
that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. "It
was a woman's voice, but it wasn't the voice of any woman in this
world!"

"It's a strange experience," said the judge.

"You can call it that!" shuddered Morgan, expressive of the inadequacy
of the words. "Anyhow, I don't want to hear it again, and I'm here to
take my medicine, and go to the pen if I've got to, Judge."

Judge Maxwell put out his hand, impatiently.

"Don't try to make yourself out a martyr, Morgan," said he. "You
knew--and you know--very well that you hadn't done anything for which
you could be punished, at least not by a prison sentence."

"Well, I don't know," said Morgan, twisting his head argumentatively, as
if to imply that there was more behind his villainy than the judge
supposed, "but I thought when a feller got to foolin' with another man's
wife----"

"Oh, pshaw!" cut in the judge. "You're thinking of it as it should be,
not as it is. The thing that you're guilty of, let me tell you for your
future guidance and peace, is only a misdemeanor in this state, not a
felony. In a case like this it ought to be a capital offense. You've
shown that there's something in you by coming back to take your
medicine, as you say, and voice or no voice, Morgan, I'm going to give
you credit for that."

"If the devil ever rode a man!" said Morgan.

"No, it was far from that," reproved the judge.

"It got me goin', Judge," said Morgan, scaring up a little jerky laugh,
"and it got me goin' _right_! It stuck to me till I got on that train
and headed for this town, and I'll hear the ring of it in my ear to my
last--what's that?"

Morgan started to his feet, pale and shaking.

"It was the wind," said the judge.

"Well, I'm here, anyhow, and I came fast as I could," said Morgan,
appealingly. "Do you think it'll stick to me, and keep it up?"

"Why should it?" said the judge. "You've done your duty, even