s owned up I liked Martha,
and was kind of mad at myself fur that. But I told him some more about
her, too. Somehow I jest couldn't help it. He laughs at me and goes on
into the tent.

I laid there and looked at the fire fur quite a spell, outside the tent.
I was thinking, if all them tales wasn't jest dern foolishness, how I
wisht I would really find a dad that was a high-muckymuck and could come
back in an automobile and take her away. I laid there fur a long, long
time; it must of been fur a couple of hours. I supposed the doctor had
went to sleep.

But all of a sudden I looks up, and he is in the door of the tent
staring at me. I seen he had been in there at it hard agin, and
thinking, quiet-like, all this time. He stood there in the doorway of
the tent, with the firelight onto his face and his red beard, and his
arms stretched out, holding to the canvas and looking at me strange and
wild. Then he moved his hand up and down at me, and he says:

"If she's fool enough to love you, treat her well--treat her well. For
if you don't, you can never run away from the hell you'll carry in your
own heart."

And he kind of doubled up and pitched forward when he said that, and
if I hadn't ketched him he would of fell right acrost the fire. He was
plumb pifflicated.

CHAPTER VII

Martha wouldn't of took anything fur being around Miss Hampton, she
said. Miss Hampton was kind of quiet and sweet and pale looking, and
nobody ever thought of talking loud or raising any fuss when she was
around. She had enough money of her own to run herself on, and she kep'
to herself a good deal. She had come to that town from no one knowed
where, years ago, and bought that place. Fur all of her being so gentle
and easy and talking with one of them soft, drawly kind of voices,
Martha says, no one had ever dared to ast her about herself, though they
was a lot of women in that town that was wishful to.

But Martha said she knowed what Miss Hampton's secret was, and she
hadn't told no one, neither. Which she told me, and all the promising I
done about not telling would of made the cold chills run up your back,
it was so solemn. Miss Hampton had been jilted years ago, Martha said,
and the name of the jilter was David Armstrong. Well, he must of been
a low down sort of man. Martha said if things was only fixed in this
country like they ought to be, she would of sent a night to find that
David Armstrong. And that would of ended up in a