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"Do you like him better'n you do me?"

The girl shook her head with the tiniest and briefest of shakes.

"Then, fer God's sake, tell him he kain't come no more!"

"Please! Please! I kain't tell him that! I kain't do it, Abner. He's been so nice to me. Not another soul in town ever spoke to me 'cept him." Her eyes filled with tears. "He—he got me books, if—if it hadn't been for him I guess I'd gone plum crazy!" she broke off, biting her lips to control herself.

Abner felt the justice of this. "So you won't send him off?"

Nessie gave her head a little jerky shake, blinked, and turned away to her room.

Abner stood and watched her go down the hall, filled with that sense of profanation which an old rival always inspires in a young lover. For Belshue to come to see Nessie at all was somehow a monstrous thing. As Nessie turned into her room at the end of the hall she seemed to Abner a sort of human sacrifice offered up to Age.

He went back into his own room with his misery in his face and bearing. Tug Beavers looked up anxiously as his friend entered.

"Do any good?" he queried in a low tone.

Abner shook his head.

"She wouldn't go with you—after that!"

"Nuh-uh."

"Why?"

"She's goin' with somebody else."

Tug was shocked.

"Who?"

"Belshue."

"Belshue!"

Abner nodded.

"Well I—be—damn' . . ." A long pause, and Tug continued, "A infidel—why, Abner, that man'll drag her soul straight down to hell, don't she know that?"

"She thinks she can convert him."