as your fault. George wanted to make it up."

"With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion
of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The geyser
of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back with you
that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like bitter
aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think I'll have you
without him? By the God of Israel, no!"

Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
the rocker.

Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it. I'm
poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I married
George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he shared; and
I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what I saved went
smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for myself. I can work
awhile yet; but I wanted to see if I could fit in out here and get well
again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his grandfather. That's the
way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But give a dog a bad name--ah, you
shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I didn't ruin him. I didn't
kill him. He never came to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy.
Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say
what you want to say, and let's understand once for all," she added, with
a sudden sharpness.

Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three
thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the boy
here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the boy
stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life."

The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger,
then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy
stepped from behind the stove.

"You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said, "here where you have rights
as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that." He turned to
his father. "You thought a lot of George," he added. "He was the apple of
your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George was
foolish--I've known it all these years. George was pretty foolish. He
gambled, he bet at races, he speculated--wild. You didn't kno