e understood now that Mrs. Toomey had
accepted the loan hoping to carry water on both shoulders, and finding
herself unable to do so, had eased herself of the burden which required
the least courage. The perspicacity of years of experience seemed to
come to Kate in a few minutes, so surely did she follow Mrs. Toomey's
motives and reasoning.

Was this human nature when one understood it? Was this what the world
was like if one were out in it? Wasn't there anybody sincere or kind or
disinterested? She asked herself these questions despairingly as she
untied her horse and swung slowly into the saddle.

"Poverty makes most people sordid, selfish, cowardly." She fancied she
heard Mormon Joe saying it, and herself expressing her disbelief in the
statement. "There are few persons strong enough to stand the gaff of
public opinion." She had contradicted him, she remembered.

She recalled--word for word, almost--a philosophical dissertation
apropos of Prouty as he sat on the wagon tongue one evening smoking his
pipe in the moonlight.

"People who live without change in a small community grow to attach an
exaggerated importance to the opinions of others. They come to live and
breathe with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When life
resolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes for
cowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deteriorate
with inferior associates and only small interests to occupy their
minds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty or
vanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns to
bitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are the
natural offspring of small intelligences and narrow environment--and
they flourish in a town like Prouty."

"I don't believe it!" she had cried, shocked by his cynicism. He had
shrugged a shoulder and replied solemnly:

"I hope to God you'll never know how true it is, Katie. I hope no
combination of circumstances will ever place you at their mercy. It is
to make any such condition impossible that I am bending all my energies
to get on my feet again."

In this moment it seemed to Kate that his cynicism had the sweetness of
honey compared to her own bitterness.

Since the murder, curiosity had changed to unfriendliness, and
unfriendliness in some instances to actual hostility. Her slightest
advance was met by a barrier of coldness that froze her, and she quickly
had come to wi