untainted. Mayors reason slowly, but,
the well being eliminated, the official mind had to travel toward the
standpipe--there was no other track for it to go in. The standpipe amply
rewarded investigation. The tramp had got even with Moonstone. He had
climbed the standpipe by the handholds and let himself down into
seventy-five feet of cold water, with his shoes and hat and roll of
ticking. The city council had a mild panic and passed a new ordinance
about tramps. But the fever had already broken out, and several adults
and half a dozen children died of it.

Thea had always found everything that happened in Moonstone exciting,
disasters particularly so. It was gratifying to read sensational
Moonstone items in the Denver paper. But she wished she had not chanced
to see the tramp as he came into town that evening, sniffing the
supper-laden air. His face remained unpleasantly clear in her memory,
and her mind struggled with the problem of his behavior as if it were a
hard page in arithmetic. Even when she was practicing, the drama of the
tramp kept going on in the back of her head, and she was constantly
trying to make herself realize what pitch of hatred or despair could
drive a man to do such a hideous thing. She kept seeing him in his
bedraggled clown suit, the white paint on his roughly shaven face,
playing his accordion before the saloon. She had noticed his lean body,
his high, bald forehead that sloped back like a curved metal lid. How
could people fall so far out of fortune? She tried to talk to Ray
Kennedy about her perplexity, but Ray would not discuss things of that
sort with her. It was in his sentimental conception of women that they
should be deeply religious, though men were at liberty to doubt and
finally to deny. A picture called "The Soul Awakened," popular in
Moonstone parlors, pretty well interpreted Ray's idea of woman's
spiritual nature.

One evening when she was haunted by the figure of the tramp, Thea went
up to Dr. Archie's office. She found him sewing up two bad gashes in the
face of a little boy who had been kicked by a mule. After the boy had
been bandaged and sent away with his father, Thea helped the doctor wash
and put away the surgical instruments. Then she dropped into her
accustomed seat beside his desk and began to talk about the tramp. Her
eyes were hard and green with excitement, the doctor noticed.

"It seems to me, Dr. Archie, that the whole town's to blame. I'm to
blame, myself. I