and I'm quite cheerful and
kind. Then there's George--little George. I thought you'd like to have
your grandson here with you."

"I've lived without him--or his father--for eight years, an' I could
bear it a while yet, mebbe."

There was a half-choking sound from the old woman in the rocking-chair,
but she did not speak, though her knitting dropped into her lap.

"But if you knew us better, perhaps you'd like us better," rejoined
Cassy gently. "We're both pretty easy to get on with, and we see the
bright side of things. He has a wonderful disposition, has George."

"I ain't goin' to like you any better," said the old man, getting to his
feet. "I ain't goin' to give you any rights here. I've thought it out,
and my mind's made up. You can't come it over me. You ruined my boy's
life and sent him to his grave. He'd have lived to be an old man out
here; but you spoiled him. You trapped him into marrying you, with your
kicking and your comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and you
parted us--parted him and me for ever."

"That was your fault. George wanted to make it up."

"With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion
of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The
geyser of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back
with you that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like
bitter aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think I'll
have you without him? By the God of Israel, no!"

Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
the rocker.

Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it.
I'm poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I
married George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he
shared; and I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what
I saved went smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for
myself. I can work awhile yet, but I wanted to see if I could fit in
out here, and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his
grandfather. That's the way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But give
a dog a bad name--ah, you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I
didn't ruin him. I didn't kill him. He never came to any bad through me.
I helped him; he was happy. Wh