le thing, and you cannot get it. Bribery is useless! Force is
useless! Craft is useless! This afternoon I thought I saw another
way. What I could get no other way I might get from this little girl.
She is only a child. I believe I could touch her pity--ah, Ned Trent,
Ned Trent, can you ever forget her frightened, white face begging you
to be kind?" He paced back and forth between the two bronze guns with
long, straight strides, like a panther in a cage. "Her aid is mine for
the asking--but she makes it impossible to ask! I could not do it.
Better try _la Longue Traverse_ than take advantage of her pity--she'd
surely get into trouble. What wonderful eyes she has. She thinks I am
a brute--how she sobbed, as though her little heart had broken. Well,
it was the only way to destroy her interest in me. I had to do it. Now
she will despise me and forget me. It is better that she should think
me a brute than that I should be always haunted by those pleading
eyes." The door of the distant church house opened and closed. He
smiled bitterly. "To be sure, I haven't tried that," he acknowledged.
"Their teachings are singularly apropos to my case--mercy, justice,
humanity--yes, and love of man. I'll try it. I'll call for help on the
love of man, since I cannot on the love of woman. The love of
woman--ah--yes."

He set his feet reflectively toward the chapel.

_Chapter Nine_

After a moment he pushed open the door without ceremony, and entered.
He bent his brows, studying the Reverend Archibald Crane, while the
latter, looking up startled, turned pink.

He was a pink little man, anyway, the Reverend Archibald Crane, and
why, in the inscrutability of its wisdom, the Church had sent him out
to influence strong, grim men, the Church in its inscrutable wisdom
only knows. He wore at the moment a cambric English boating-hat to
protect his bald head from the draught, a full clerical costume as far
as the trousers, which were of lavender, and a pair of beaded
moccasins faced with red. His weak little face was pink, and two tufts
of side-whiskers were nearly so. A heavy gold-headed cane stood at his
hand. When he heard the door open he exclaimed, before raising his
head, "My, these first flies of the season do bother me so!" and then
looked startled.

"Good-evening," greeted Ned Trent, stopping squarely in the centre of
the room.

The clergyman spread his arms along the desk's edge in embarrassment.

"Good-evening," he returne