, isn't it. But he loves
you in spite of it all. He told me he'd go to the gallows for you. Aren't
men the sillies! But just the same, dearie, we women like to hear them
murmur those little heroic things, don't we? It was on the night I told
him you'd told Corrigan about the dynamiting."

"Oh!" said the girl.

"That was my high card," laughed the woman, harshly. "He took it and
derided me. I decided right then that I wouldn't play any more."

"Then he didn't send for you?"

"Corrigan did that, dearie."

"You--you knew Corrigan before--before you came here?"

"You _can_ guess intelligently, can't you?"

"Corrigan planned it _all_?"

"All." Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.

"What a brazen, crafty and unprincipled _thing_ Trevison must think me!"

Hester reached out a hand and laid it on the girl's. "I--there was a time
when I would have done murder to have him think of me as he thinks of you,
dearie. He isn't for me, though, and I can't spoil any woman's happiness.
There's little enough--but I'm not going to philosophize. I was going away
without telling you this. I don't know why I am telling it now. I always
was a little soft. But if you hadn't spoken as you did a while ago in that
crowd--taking Trevison's end--I--I think you'd never have known. Somehow,
it seemed you deserved him, dearie. And I couldn't bear to--to think of
him facing any more disappointment. He--he took it so--"

The girl looked up, to see the woman's eyes filling with a luminous mist.
A quick conception of what this all meant to the woman thrilled the girl.
She got up and walked to the woman's side. "I'm _so_ sorry, Hester," she
said as her arms stole around the other's neck.

* * * * *

She went out a little later, into the glaring, shimmering sunlight of the
morning, her cheeks red, her eyes aglow, her heart racing wildly, to see
an engine and a luxurious private car just pulling from the main track to
a switch.

"Oh," she whispered, joyously; "it's father's!"

And she ran toward it, tingling with a new-found hope.

In her room at the _Castle_ sat a woman who was finding the world very
empty. It held nothing for her except the sad consolation of repentance.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FIGHT

"The boss is sure a she-wolf at playin' a lone hand," growled Barkwell,
shortly after dusk, to Jud Weaver, the straw boss. "Seems he thinks his
friends is delica