hem--but Wiley put all thought of Charley aside for there
in the snow was the print of a woman's shoe. Small and dainty it was
and he knew in his heart that Virginia had been there and gone. She
might have been watching him as he sat at his work, she might even be
watching him now; but again something told him that, however she had
come, she had gone away in a rage. The stab of the high heel, the
heedless step into a mud-puddle, the swinging stride down the trail;
all spoke of defiance, of a coming in the open and a return without
fear of man or devil. She had come there to see him and, finding him
away, she had thrown down the papers and gone home. And that was the
answer to his love.

Wiley sat down by the fire and tried to account for it. He imagined
himself a woman, young and beautiful, but poor; working hard, as
Virginia now worked, for her board and keep. Before her there was
nothing--her father was dead or lost, her mother a hopeless scold, her
fortune irretrievably gone--and yet she closed the only door out. As an
earnest of his love, without asking anything in return, he had restored
to her a portion of her stock; and she had promptly flung it back. Had
Charley made some break in his method of presentation? But no, she would
not mind if he had; it was something deeper, behind. He battered his
brain, recalling every little incident that might have turned her heart
against him, and it all brought him back to the trial.

When he had had her mother arrested for coming into his office and
demanding--what was it she had demanded? He remembered the six-shooter,
and the deputy and Blount, and the Widow's rage and tears; and
Virginia's return and all she had said to him--but what was it her
mother had demanded? Her stock! All her stock! The stock she had refused
to sell for ten cents a share and then had turned around and put up with
Blount as security on a quick-action note. She had demanded it all back,
without reason, without compensation, simply because she was a woman
with a gun; and because he had invoked the law to protect him in his
rights Virginia had sworn she would kill him. Wiley rose up swiftly and
pulled the curtain across the window, and then he considered the matter
again.

It was not like Virginia to resort to any violence--she had been
humiliated too often by her mother's--but she must still think he had
deprived her of her rights. By what process of reasoning could they
fix the blame on him for thi