o," the woman reiterated sharply. "Dan Treu was here. He wants to see
you most particular."

"You didn't tell him----"

"Of course not."

"You won't go back on me, Nell?"

The woman regarded her in cold dislike.

"No, I'll not go back on you, Harpe. A man or a woman that ain't got
some redeemin' trait, some one thing that you can bank on, is no good on
earth, and stickin' to them I've throwed in with happens to be mine.
What you goin' to do? stay and brazen it out--this mess you're in--or
quit the flat?"

"Nell," she replied irrelevantly with a quick, uncertain glance around,
"I'm _afraid_. Do you know what it is to be afraid?"

"I've been scart," the woman answered curtly.

"I've a queer, sinkin' feeling here," she laid her hand at the pit of
her stomach, "and my back feels weak--all gone. My knees take spells of
wobblin' when I walk. I'm afraid in the dark. I'm afraid in the light.
Not so much of any one thing as of some big, intangible thing that
hasn't happened. I can't shake off the feeling. It's horrible. My mind
won't stop thinkin' of things I don't want to think of. My nerves are a
wreck, Nell. I've lost my grip, my judgment. I'm not myself."

Nell Beecroft listened in hard curiosity, eyeing her critically.

"Oh, yes, you are, only you've never really seen yourself before. You've
took your brass for courage. Lots of people do that till some real
show-down comes."

"Look here, Nell,"--her voice held a whine of protest--"you haven't got
me sized up right." Yet in her heart she knew that the woman's brutal
analysis was true. Better even than Nell Beecroft she knew that what
passed with her following for shrewdness and courage in reality was
callousness and calculating cynicism.

The woman ignored the interruption and went on--

"So long as you could swagger around with Andy P. Symes to bolster you
up and a crowd of old women to flatter you, you could put up a front,
but you ain't the kind, Harpe, that can turn your back to the wall, fold
your arms, and sling defiance at the town if they all turn on you."

"But they won't."

"You've got a kind of mulishness, and you've got gall, and when things
are goin' your way you'll take long chances, but they ain't the traits
that gives a person the sand to stand out in the open with their head up
and let the storms whip thunder out of them without a whimper."

"It's my nerves, I tell you; they're shot to pieces--the strain I've
been under--everything goin'