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easily. "It'll die down an' that'll end it—tull you do somethin' else."

"I don't give a damn for the rest of 'em," proceeded Abner gloomily. "What I'm worried about is Adelaide."

"Think she's goin' to hold it agin' you?" asked Jim with concern.

"Don't know."

"I don' imagine so. No matter what man she gits it'll be the same thing. A sensible gal like Addy ort to know that."

"Wish you'd give her a hint."

"She'll find it out fer herse'f, if she don't know it already. Have you seen her sence the news got aroun' town?"

"No, I'm kinder skittish of her."

"That's no good," declared Jim roundly. "You ort to go an' git married to her. It's ridickilous, a man of yore age havin' troubles like this. This here scatterin' idyah ain't no good. A man ort to keep his childern where he can lay his finger on 'em; he gits satisfaction out of his fam'ly same as anything else he owns. Thing for you to do is to marry Adelaide, an' that'll end up all this gossip. Gals never talk about what a married man done when he was single."

But Abner could not accept this broad, easy view of life. He could not marry Adelaide Jones out of hand; neither could he dismiss his relations with Nessie Belshue in such a cavalierish manner. Their baby girl would remain their baby girl no matter whom he married; and then his old tenderness toward Nessie, his effort to marry her which had been frustrated by the mob, moved him.

Several times he nerved himself to go to Adelaide and try to explain himself—if only she could understand how he felt she might come to sympathize with him and even love him in that strange mixed way women have of loving the very wounds of another love. But he never went to Adelaide. He was afraid. Not so much that she would take the cold attitude of the other village girls who had no compassion for any frailties except their own; but that she might not take