the young man was offered a place as teacher in the school, in
co-operation with the Mormon teachers. Shefford experienced no twinge of
conscience when he accepted.

It was the fourth evening after the never-to-be-forgotten moonlight ride
to the valley that Shefford passed under the dark pinyon-trees on his
way to Fay Larkin's cottage. He paused in the gloom and memory beset
him. The six months were annihilated, and it was the night he had fled.
But now all was silent. He seemed to be trying to drag himself back.
A beginning must be made. Only how to meet her--what to say--what to
conceal!

He tapped on the door and she came out. After all, it was a meeting
vastly different from what his feeling made him imagine it might have
been. She was nervous, frightened, as were all the other women, for
that matter. She was alone in the cottage. He made haste to reassure her
about the improbability of any further trouble such as had befallen
the last week. As he had always done on those former visits to her,
he talked rapidly, using all his wit, and here his emotion made him
eloquent; he avoided personalities, except to tell about his prospects
of work in the village, and he sought above all to lead her mind from
thought of herself and her condition. Before he left her he had the
gladness of knowing he had succeeded.

When he said good night he felt the strange falsity of his position. He
did not expect to be able to keep up the deception for long. That roused
him, and half the night he lay awake, thinking. Next day he was the life
of the work and study and play in that village. Kindness and good-will
did not need inspiration, but it was keen, deep passion that made him a
plotter for influence and friendship. Was there a woman in the village
whom he might trust, in case he needed one? And his instinct guided him
to her whom he had liked well--Ruth. Ruth Jones she had called herself
at the trial, and when Shefford used the name she laughed mockingly.
Ruth was not very religious, and sometimes she was bitter and hard.
She wanted life, and here she was a prisoner in a lonely valley. She
welcomed Shefford's visits. He imagined that she had slightly changed,
and whether it was the added six months with its trouble and pain or
a growing revolt he could not tell. After a time he divined that the
inevitable retrogression had set in: she had not enough faith to uphold
the burden she had accepted, nor the courage to cast it off. She was