able to tell some of 'em."

The badman displayed no enthusiasm at the personality. He considered
carefully before replying. When he did reply, however, he set the
saloonkeeper re-sorting some of his convictions, mixing them with a
doubt which had never occurred to him before.

"Sure," said Stormy, with a contemptuous shrug, "and I guess you, with
the rest, will do some of the listenin'. You're all wise guys
hereabouts--mostly as wise as the p'lice. Best hand the company a
round of drinks. I've got money to burn."

He laughed, but no amount of questioning could elicit anything more of
interest to the curious minds about him.

It was on the second day after the whisky-running that Kate Seton was
returning home after an arduous morning in the village. She was
feeling unusually depressed, and her handsome face was pathetically
lacking in the high spirits and delight of living usual to it. It was
not her way to indulge in the self-pitying joys of depression. On the
contrary, her buoyancy, her spirit, were such as to attract the weaker
at all times to lean on her for support.

She was tired, too, physically tired. The day had been one of
sweltering heat, one of those sultry, oppressive days, which are
fortunately few enough in the brilliant Canadian summer.

As she reached the wooden bridge across the river she paused and
leaned herself against the handrail, and, propping her elbow upon it,
leaned her chin upon the palm of her hand and abandoned herself to a
long train of troubled thought. It may have been chance; it may have
been that her thought inspired the direction of her gaze. It may have
been that her attitude had nothing whatsoever to do with her thought.
Certain it is, however, that her brooding eyes were turned, as they
were so often turned, upon that little ranch house perched so high up
on the valley slope.

She remained thus for a while, her eyes almost unseeing in their
far-away gaze, but, later, without shifting her attitude, they glanced
off to the right in the direction of the old pine, rearing its
vagabond head high above the surrounding wealth of by no means
insignificant foliage.

It was a splendid sight, and, to her imagination, it looked the
personification of the rascality of the village she had so come to
love. Look at it. Its trunk, naked as the supports of a scarecrow,
suggesting mighty strength, indolence and poverty. There, above, its
ragged garments--unwholesome, dirty, like the garment