ake the punishment very well," admitted Connor. "There's a touch
of sporting blood in you, but the trouble is that the good in you has
never had a fair chance to come to the top. I came back, and I brought
Ruth with me.

"I'll tell you about her. She's meant to be an honest-to-God woman--the
kind that keeps men clean--she's meant for the big-time stuff. And where
did I find her? In a jay town punching a telegraph key. It was all
wrong.

"She was made to spend a hundred thousand a year. Everything that money
buys means a lot to her. I saw that right away. I like her. I did more
than like her. I loved her. That makes you flinch under the whip, does
it? I don't say I'm worthy of her, but I'm as near to her as you are.

"I admit I played a rotten part. I went to this girl, all starved the
way she was for the velvet touch. I laid my proposition before her. She
was to come up here and bamboozle you. She was to knock your eye out and
get you clear of the valley with the horses. Then I was going to run
those horses on the tracks and make a barrel of coin for all of us.

"You'd think she'd take on a scheme like that right away; but she
didn't. She fought to keep from going crooked until I showed her it was
as much to your advantage as it was to ours. Then she decided to come,
and she came. I worked my stall and she worked hers, and she got into
the valley.

"But this voice of yours in the Room of Silence--why didn't it put you
wise to my game? Well, David, I'll tell you why. The voice is the bunk.
It's your own thoughts. It's your own hunches. The god you've been
worshiping up here is yourself, and in the end you're going to pay hell
for doing it.

"Well, here's the girl in the Garden, and everything going smooth. We
have you, and she's about to take you out and show you how to be happy
in the world. But then she has to go into your secret room. That's the
woman of it. You blame her? Why, you infernal blockhead, you've been
making love to her like God Almighty speaking out of a cloud of fire!
How could she hear your line of chatter without wanting to find out the
secrets that made you the nut you are?

"Well, we went in, and we found out. We found out what? Enough to make
the girl see that you're 'noble,' as she calls it. Enough to make me see
that you're a simp. You've been chasing bubbles all your life. You're
all wrong from the first.

"Those first four birds who started the Garden, who were they? There was
John, a