t to know me. I kept the Polka saloon until I came
to live with Jim. That's six years ago. Perhaps I've changed some."

The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned her
head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she again spoke,
and then more rapidly:

"Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's
no great harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim
here"--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--"used to know me,
if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he spent all
he had. And one day--it's six years ago this winter--Jim came into my
back room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and
never moved again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and never
seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said as how it
was caused all along of his way of life--for Jim was mighty free and
wild-like--and that he would never get better, and couldn't last long
anyway. They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he
was no good to anyone and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was
something in Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I
said 'No.' I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen
like yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel,
you see, and I brought my baby here."

With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke, slowly
shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the ruined man
between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if
she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and
expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten
with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm around
her.

Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:

"It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about yer, for
I was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any woman to help
me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the Indians hereabout,
who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North
Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The Doctor would run up from
Sacramento once in a while. He'd ask to see 'Miggles's baby,' as
he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd say, 'Miggles; you're a
trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem so lone