said quietly.

He walked into the spare bedroom. Hazel heard the door close gently
behind him, heard the soft click of a well-oiled lock. Then she
slumped, gasping, in the wide-armed chair by the window, and the hot
tears came in a blinding flood.

CHAPTER XXX

THE AFTERMATH

They exchanged only bare civilities at the breakfast table, and Bill at
once went downtown. When he was gone, Hazel fidgeted uneasily about
the rooms. She had only a vague idea of legal processes, having never
seen the inside of a courtroom. She wondered what penalty would be
inflicted on Bill, whether he would be fined or sent to prison. Surely
it was a dreadful thing to batter men like Brooks and Lorimer and
Parkinson. They might even make it appear that Bill had tried to
murder them. Her imagination magnified and distorted the incident out
of all proportion.

And brooding over these things, she decided to go and talk it over with
Kitty Brooks. Kitty would not blame her for these horrid man troubles.

But she was mistaken there. Kitty was all up in arms. She was doubly
injured. Her husband had suffered insult and brutal injury. Moreover,
he was threatened with financial loss. Perhaps that threatened wound
in the pocketbook loomed larger than the physical hurt. At any rate,
she vented some of her spleen on Hazel.

"Your husband started this mining thing," she declared heatedly.
"Jimmie says that if he persists in trying to turn things upside down
it will mean a loss of thousands. And we haven't any money to
lose--I'm sure Jimmie has worked hard for what he's got. I'm simply
sick over it. It's bad enough to have one's husband brought home
looking as if he'd been slugged by footpads, and to have the papers go
on about it so. But to have a big loss inflicted on us just when we
were really beginning to get ahead, is too much. I wish you'd never
introduced your miner to us."

That speech, of course, obliterated friendship on the spot, as far as
Hazel was concerned. Even though she was quite prepared to have Bill
blamed for the trouble, did in fact so blame him herself, she could not
stomach Kitty's language nor attitude. But the humiliation of the
interview she chalked up against Bill. She went home with a red spot
glowing on either cheekbone. A rather incoherent telephone
conversation with Mrs. Allen T. Bray, in which that worthy matron
declared her husband prostrated from his injuries, and in the same
breath