Ellen had repeated the message, watching him narrowly, but he had only laughed. “Who are they?” she had persisted. “I'll tell you all about it some day,” he had said. But he had told Dan the whole story, and, although he did not know it, Dan had from that time on been his self-constituted bodyguard. During his campaign speeches Dan was always near, his right hand on a revolver in his coat pocket, and for hours at a time he stood outside the pharmacy, favoring every seeker for drugs or soap or perfume with a scowling inspection. When he could not do it, he enlisted Joe Wilkinson in the evenings, and sometimes the two of them, armed, policed the meeting halls. As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night. On his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the uncanny ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily along in rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed with his high calling of personal detective. Joe, discovered, grinned sheepishly. “Thought that looked like your back,” he said. “Nice evening for a walk, isn't it?” “Let me look at you, Joe,” said Willy Cameron. “You look strange to me. Ah, now I have it. You look like a comet without a tail. Where's the family?” “Making taffy. How--is Edith?” “Doing nicely.” He avoided the boy's eyes. “I guess I'd better tell you. Dan's told me about her. I--” Joe hesitated. Then: “She never seemed like that sort of a girl,” he finished, bitterly. “She isn't that sort of girl, Joe.” “She did it. How could a fellow know she wouldn't do it again?” “She has had a pretty sad sort of lesson.” Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders drooping. “I might as well finish with it,” he said, “now I've started. I've always been crazy about her. Of course now--I haven't slept for two nights.” “I think it's rather like this, Joe,” Willy Cameron said, after a pause. “We are not one person, really. We are all two or three people, and all different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the strongest at the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we do that we bury that part. That's what has happened to Edith. Unless, of course,” he added, “we go on convincing her that she is still the thing she doesn't want to be.” “I'd like to kill the man,” Joe said. But after a little, as they neared the edge of the park, he looked up. “You mean, go on as if nothing had happened?” “Precisely,” said Willy Cameron, “as though nothing had happened.” CHAPTER XLIII The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly. Willy Cameron found himself received as an old friend, with no tendency to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour, he had been one of them.