al wish and, having quieted her nerves by a strong effort of
will, she was ready to heed her mother's summons to enter the
drawing-room. As she stepped across the threshold there was a moment of
embarrassment during which neither spoke; but it was only for a moment,
Jasper Very being too full of gratitude to remain long silent. "Miss
Viola," he said, grasping her hand, "I have come this morning to thank
you for your great kindness in apprising me of Sam Wiles' plot to
injure me. I am under a thousand obligations to you for what you did."

"Do not speak of that, Mr. Very; it was a thing any friend would have
done. But tell me whether or not you escaped from their intentions
without any injury to yourself."

"Yes, thanks to your promptness, I was able to enlist some friends on
my behalf, and with them and some officers of the law we were able to
outwit the ruffians and beat them at their own game." He then laid
before her in detail the events of the past night.

Viola listened with closest attention to the narrative. When Jasper
spoke of being surrounded by the outlaws and their threats, the color
left her cheeks; but when he told how their enemies were overcome and
the ludricrous predicament of Turner as he sat in the pot of tar, a
sigh of relief escaped her lips, which was followed by a hearty laugh.
However, her mood soon changed, and with a serious look coming into her
blue eyes she said: "I am sure those moonshiners are a menace to our
community. They are becoming more and more hardened and reckless. I
fear that they will yet do some of us great injury. They doubtless hate
papa, who has to sentence them to prison, and they are foes of all
order-loving men and women in this region. As to Sam Wiles, I cannot
bear to be near him. His very presence repels and frightens me. When he
looked at me in church last Sunday night, I shuddered. It seemed as
though a venomous snake had put its folds around my neck. Zibe Turner,
called the monster dwarf, seems to me to be almost less than human. He
combines the ferocity of the tiger, the slyness of the fox, and the
shape of a monkey. I am doubly alarmed when he is near."

"This is the natural recoil of virtue away from vice," said Jasper
Very. "God has given to woman an intuitive sense which, without any
long process of reasoning, shows her when a man is bad. It is her
protection against his greater strength. It is the Almighty's gift to
her, and is beyond the value of rubies. If