of necessity, passed among
the most vicious and degrading elements of mining camps, and you do not
hesitate even to take human life when in your judgment it seems
necessary to preserve your own. Under this veneer of lawlessness you
may, indeed, possess a warm heart, Mr. Hampton; you may be a good
fellow, but you are certainly not a model character, even according to
the liberal code of the border."

"Extremely kind of you to enter my rooms uninvited, and furnish me with
this list of moral deficiencies," acknowledged the other with affected
carelessness. "But thus far you have failed to tell me anything
strikingly new. Am I to understand you have some particular object in
this exchange of amenities?"

"Most assuredly. It is to ask if such a person as you practically
confess yourself to be--homeless, associating only with the most
despicable and vicious characters, and leading so uncertain and
disreputable a life--can be fit to assume charge of a girl, almost a
woman, and mould her future?"

For a long, breathless moment Hampton stared incredulously at his
questioner, crushing his cigar between his teeth. Twice he started to
speak, but literally choked back the bitter words burning his lips,
while an uncontrollable admiration for the other's boldness began to
overcome his first fierce anger.

"By God!" he exclaimed at last, rising to his feet and pointing toward
the door. "I have shot men for less. Go, before I forget your cloth.
You little impudent fool! See here--I saved that girl from death, or
worse; I plucked her from the very mouth of hell; I like her; she 's
got sand; so far as I know there is not a single soul for her to turn
to for help in all this wide world. And you, you miserable, snivelling
hypocrite, you little creeping Presbyterian parson, you want me to
shake her! What sort of a wild beast do you suppose I am?"

Wynkoop had taken one hasty step backward, impelled to it by the fierce
anger blazing from those stern gray eyes. But now he paused, and, for
the only time on record, discovered the conventional language of polite
society inadequate to express his needs.

"I think," he said, scarcely realizing his own words, "you are a damned
fool."

Into Hampton's eyes there leaped a light upon which other men had
looked before they died,--the strange mad gleam one sometimes sees in
fighting animals, or amid the fierce charges of war. His hand swept
instinctively backward, closing upon the bu