"That's just what I'm a-comin' to,--the Priest or the Levite?" said Jake. "Well, Mart said, 'Where're the men they caught--won't they help?' and I says, 'They paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,' says I, 'the screams of that little boy at the disgrace of it and the terror of the jail--man--I can't stand it!' 'How much is it?' sighs Mart. 'An even hundred fine and seventeen dollars and fifty cents costs,' says I. Mart's eyes was leaking, and he gets up and goes to the vault, and comes back with the cash and says, blubbering like a calf: 'Here, Jake Dolan, you old scoundrel, take this. I'll pass a paper and get it to-morrow--now get out of here.' And he handed me the money all cried over where he'd been slow counting it out, and said when he'd got hold of his wobbly jaw: 'Don't you tell her where you got it--I don't want her around here. I'll see her to-morrow when I'm down that way and talk to her for old Cap Lee--' And then he laughs as he stands in the door and says: 'Well, Jim,' and he points up, 'your bread cast upon the waters was a long time a-coming--but here she is;' and he says, 'Do you suppose the old villain knows?' And I turned and hunted up the justice and went around to the office, and told Trixie to 'go sin no more,' and she laughs and says, 'Well, hardly ever!' and I kissed the kid, and he fought my whiskers, and we all live happy ever after." But the colonel, after Dolan left the office, went into the darkening room, and spread out the harsh letter from the Vermont banker demanding money long past due, and read and reread it and took up his burden, and got into the weary treadmill of his life. It rained the next day, and he did not go out with his subscription paper; he had learned that people subscribe better on bright days; and as Hendricks and Barclay were both out of town, he wrote a dilatory letter to the Vermont people--the fifth he had written about that particular transaction--and waited another rainy day and still another before starting out with his paper. But the event was past; the cry of the child was not in the people's ears; they knew that the colonel had put up the money; so it was not until Hendricks came back and heard the story from Dolan that the colonel was repaid. Then because he actually had the money--at least half of it due on that particular debt, which was one of scores of its kind--the colonel delayed another day and another, and while he was musing the fire burned. And events started in Vermont which greatly changed the course of this story.