by the fact that you've got a few dollars that
are red with blood?" She flung the taunt at her with savage insolence.

"My position in Crowheart is of no importance to me. But"--her voice cut
like finely tempered steel--"don't goad me too far. Don't forget that I
know you for what you are--a moral plague--creeping like a pestilence
among people who are not familiar with your face. I know, and you _know_
that I know you are in no position, Dr. Harpe, to point a finger at the
commonest women in the dance hall below."

The woman sprang from her chair and walked to her with the crouching
swiftness of a preying animal. She grasped Essie Tisdale's wrist in a
grip which left its imprint for hours after.

"How dare you!"

Essie Tisdale raised her chin higher.

"How dare I?" She smiled in the infuriated woman's face. "It takes no
courage for me to oppose you now. When I was a biscuit-shooter here, as
you lost no opportunity to remind me, you loomed large! That time has
gone by. Crowheart will know you some day as I know you. Your name will
be a byword in every saloon and bunk-house in the country!"

"I'll _kill_ you!"

The tense fingers were curved like steel hooks as she sprang for Essie
Tisdale's slender throat, but even as the girl shoved her chair between
them a masculine voice called "Esther" and a rap came upon the door.

Doctor Harpe's arms dropped to her side and she clutched handfuls of her
skirt as she struggled for self-control.

Essie Tisdale walked swiftly to the door and threw it wide. The towering
stranger stood in the corridor looking in amazement from one woman to
the other.

The girl turned and said with careful distinctness:

"You have been so occupied of late that perhaps you have not heard the
news. My uncle--Mr. Richard Kincaid--Dr. Harpe."

XXVIII

THE SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD

Dr. Harpe standing at her office window saw the lovely Pearline Starr,
curled and dressed at ten in the morning, trip down the street bearing a
glass of buffalo berry jelly in her white-gloved hands, while Mrs. Percy
Parrott sitting erect in the Parrotts' new, second-hand surrey, drove
toward the hotel, carefully protecting from accident some prized package
which she held in her lap. Mrs. Parrott was wearing her new ding-a-ling
hat, grass-green in color, which, topping off the moss-colored serge
which, closely fitting her attenuated figure, gave Mrs. Parrott a
surprising resemblance to a katydid about to