you?"

"Glad to have you come!" Ned responded, truthfully. "If you care to
come up to our camp we'll be glad to give you a cup of tea and
whatever else you want."

"I'll be glad to get a cup of tea" the woman declared. "We don't get
tea up here in the mountains--not very often. We don't have the money
to pay for it, and, then it is such a long way to go after it. Yes,
I'll go with you."

Ned noted that the woman did not speak the dialect of the mountains.
He wondered how long she had lived there, and if she lived alone. She
did not long leave him in doubt on these points, for she seemed
anxious to talk.

"I'm Mary Brady," she said, as they ascended the slope toward the
fire. "I came here years ago with my husband, Michael Brady, to live
in peace. Mike was a good man when he was himself, but the saloon men
of New York were always after him when he had any money. We came here
to be rid of them."

"That was the correct thing to do, it strikes me," Ned said, for want
of something better, as she seemed to expect some friendly comment.

"I don't know," she went on. "We meant it for the best--but there was
the moonshine! I didn't know about the moonshine when we came here.
All I thought of was to get away from Houston street! He fell one day
and they brought him home dead."