Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
the rocker.

Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it.
I'm poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I
married George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he
shared; and I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what
I saved went smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for
myself. I can work awhile yet, but I wanted to see if I could fit in out
here, and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his
grandfather. That's the way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But
give a dog a bad name--ah, you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me!
I didn't ruin him. I didn't kill him. He never came to any bad through
me. I helped him; he was happy. Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting
a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say what you want to say, and let's
understand once for all," she added with a sudden sharpness.

Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three
thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the
boy here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the
boy stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life."

The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger,
then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy
stepped from behind the stove.

"You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said; "here where you have rights