s grave."

"You'd love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his
father ever was?" Jim asked with a curious smile.

"Yes--he's mine!" was the quick, firm answer.

Jim watched her intently.

"I looked Death in the face for him," she went on fiercely. "I'd dive
to the bottom o' hell to find him if I knowed he wuz thar---- But what's
the use to talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a night
stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin' an'
beatin' an' torturin' him to death. The feller you've heard about ain't
him. 'Tain't no use to make me hope an' then kill me----"

"He's not dead, I tell you. I know."

Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman's breath came
in quick gasps and she smiled through her eager tears.

"And I MIGHT find him?"

"IF you've got money enough! Money can do anything in this world."

He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a
handful of yellow coin which he allowed to pour through his fingers and
rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.

Her eyes sparkled with avarice.

"It's your'n--all your'n?" she breathed hungrily.

"I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks"--he stopped
and laughed--"who thinks it's bad luck to keep money that's stained with
blood----"

Nance started back.

"Got blood on it?"

Jim spoke in confidential appeal.

"That wouldn't make any difference to you, would it?"

She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal,
hungrily.

"I--I wouldn't like it with blood marks!"

He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held
it in his open palms before her.

"Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood marks on it, do you?"

Her eyes devoured it.

"No."

He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into it and closed her
thin fingers over it.

"Feel of it--look at it!"

Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh,
caught herself in the middle of it, and lapsed suddenly into silence.

"Feels good, don't it?" he laughed.

Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker
of the candle.

"Don't it?" he repeated.

"Yeah!"

He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.

"That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round. There's your only
friend, old girl! Others promise well--but in the scratch they fail."

"Yeah--when the scra