ssly silent. What could he say? He
knew a great deal better than she the essential depravity of her mother,
and he felt keenly the cruelty of fate which had plunged a fine young
spirit into this swamp of ill-smelling humanity.

"Let us go out into the air," he suggested, presently. "The mountain wind
will do you good."

She followed him trustfully, and as she stepped from the squalor of the
hotel into the splendor of the morning her head lifted. She drank the
clear, crisp wind as one takes water in the desert.

"The air is clean, anyway," she said.

Cavanagh, to divert her, pointed away to the mountains. "There is my
dominion. Up there I am sole ruler. No one can litter the earth with
corruption or poison the streams."

She did not speak, but as she studied the ranger her face cleared. "It
_is_ beautiful up there."

He went on. "I hate all this scrap-heap quite as heartily as you do, but
up there is sweetness and sanity. The streams are germless, and the forest
cannot be devastated. That is why I am a ranger. I could not endure life
in a town like this."

He turned up the street toward the high hill to the south, and she kept
step with him. As she did not speak, he asked: "What did you expect to do
out here?"

"I hoped to teach," she replied, her voice still choked with her emotion.
"I expected to find the country much improved."

"And so it is; but it is still a long way from an Eastern State. Perhaps
you will find the people less savage than they appear at first glance."

"It isn't the town or the people, it is my mother!" she burst forth again.
"Tell me! A woman in the car yesterday accused my mother of selling
whiskey unlawfully. Is this so? Tell me!"

She faced him resolutely, and perceiving that she could not be evaded, he
made slow answer. "I don't _know_ that she does, but I've heard it charged
against her."

"Who made the charge?"

"One of the clergymen, and then it's common talk among the rough men of
the town."

"Is that the worst they say of her? Be honest with me--I want to know the
worst."

He was quite decisive as he said: "Yes, that is the worst."

She looked relieved. "I'm glad to hear you say so. I've been imagining all
kinds of terrifying things."

"Then, too, her bad health is some excuse for her housekeeping," he added,
eager to lessen the daughter's humiliation, "and you must remember her
associations are not those which breed scrupulous regard for the
proprieties."

"But s