at cynically weary paragraph at the end remarking that the
people were having quite too much of this sort of thing and that the
courts should recognize their full duty.

So that was where the new car and the trip to California was to come
from. Perhaps that was where the fifteen hundred dollars had come
from, too. But she had paid it back. She had just barely shaken the
bird-catcher's lime from her wings. She shivered and closed the paper
again.

When Zeke returned with the rope she smiled at him.

"Let's hurry back," she said.

On the way back to Bloomfield she had no eyes for the beauties of the
fast-falling October evening. But in a little while she began to feel
warmer inside. At least she had shaken the dust of the city from her
feet, the city where everyone wore a mask--of honesty and sobriety and
right living--and lived otherwise. No wonder they called it a melting
pot. She would be content from henceforth to live where the air and
the living were cleaner and purer.

So absorbed was she that she did not realize that Zeke had taken
another route home. When she noticed, she remarked on it.

"Hit's a shoht cut," explained Zeke. "You said you wanted to get home
quick."

She smiled at his responsiveness.

They came suddenly around a bend in the road upon a gang of men, road
mending. There was a huge concrete mixer and she wondered at the sight
of it, a new sign of progress for Bloomfield. There was a stretch of
loose rock and a wooden bar blocking the road. Zeke muttered his
dismay but did not stop. They rolled right up to the barrier. A man in
khaki breeches and flannel shirt and high lace boots came and waved
them back.

"You'll have to turn around," he called out cheerily, and she saw that
it was Joe Hooper. As though in answer to the obvious question he
added, as he in turn recognized her, "Like a bad penny--I'm turning up
again."

She looked at him and stared. His face was very red and somehow he
looked quite natural, more so than in his city clothes.

"What in the world?" she said.

He had come quite close and she could see he was smiling. That
baffling, uncertain look had left his face and there was something
open about it.

"Got a man's job again," he said, still smiling.

"And you're going to be in this part of the country?"

"Till the job's finished," he replied. "And there's quite a lot of it,
too. County's got a prosperous streak on. Means to have some real
roads. It's about time."