a-comin' to,--the Priest or the Levite?" said
Jake. "Well, Mart said, 'Where're the men they caught--won't they
help?' and I says, 'They paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks
Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I,
'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn
reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her
to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail,
because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says
I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,'
says I, 'the screams of that little boy at the disgrace of it and the
terror of the jail--man--I can't stand it!' 'How much is it?' sighs
Mart. 'An even hundred fine and seventeen dollars and fifty cents
costs,' says I. Mart's eyes was leaking, and he gets up and goes to
the vault, and comes back with the cash and says, blubbering like a
calf: 'Here, Jake Dolan, you old scoundrel, take this. I'll pass a
paper and get it to-morrow--now get out of here.' And he handed me
the money all cried over where he'd been slow counting it out, and
said when he'd got hold of his wobbly jaw: 'Don't you tell her where
you got it--I don't want her around here. I'll see her to-morrow when
I'm down that way and talk to her for old Cap Lee--' And then he
laughs as he stands in the door and says: 'Well, Jim,' and he points
up, 'your bread cast upon the waters was a long time a-coming--but
here she is;' and he says, 'Do you suppose the old villain knows?' And
I turned and hunted up the justice and went around to the office, and
told Trixie to 'go sin no more,' and she laughs and says, 'Well,
hardly ever!' and I kissed the kid, and he fought my whiskers, and we
all live happy ever after."

But the colonel, after Dolan left the office, went into the darkening
room, and spread out the harsh letter from the Vermont banker
demanding money long past due, and read and reread it and took up his
burden, and got into the weary treadmill of his life. It rained the
next day, and he did not go out with his subscription paper; he had
learned that people subscribe better on bright days; and as Hendricks
and Barclay were both out of town, he wrote a dilatory letter to the
Vermont people--the fifth he had written about that particular
transaction--and waited another rainy day and still another before
starting out with his paper. But the event was past; the cry of the
child