"A devilish sight better," said Milford. "I guess you're right. So you wouldn't cut her throat?" "Well, not if I were you." "I don't exactly understand the difference, but it's all right. I got to thinkin' this way about it, Bill. Most any woman will take a man back, and I said to myself that it oughtn't to be so one-sided as that. I heard she was at Antioch, at her aunt's house, so I goes up there. She was a-sweepin' when I stepped up. And she dropped the broom. I says, 'Don't be in a hurry,' and she stopped and looked at me. 'And is this you, Bob?' she says. I told her it was, so far as I knowed. She come up close to me and said I'd been workin' too hard. She took hold of my hand and turned it loose quick, lookin' like she wanted to cry. I says, 'Don't turn me loose. I've been thinkin' about you.' 'About such a thing as I am?' she says. Then I told her she was a heap better than me, and she cried. She said she never would have run away, but she drank some wine with one of her aunt's boarders. I told her all that made no difference now if she could promise not to run away again. And then she grabbed me, Bill; she grabbed me round the neck, and that was the way we made up." "Go and bring her here," said Milford, turning his eyes from the light of the lamp. "It makes no difference what I said last week or the week before, or at any time. You bring her here, and take the best room. I'll take your old bunk in there. Hitch up and go after her now. Wait a minute. Take this and buy some dishes, and curtains for the windows. That isn't enough. Take this twenty," he added, giving him a bank note. "Good as you are! Why, she's worth both of us. Any heart that wants to be forgiven is one of God's hearts. Drive fast, and the stores won't be shut up. They keep open later Saturday nights. What are you staring at? I can see the poor thing now, clinging to you." "Wait a moment, Bill. I guess she'll be afraid to come. I told her what you said." "You did? Then go and tell her that I'm the biggest liar on earth. Wait! I'll go with you." CHAPTER XXVI. THE OLD STORY. A black-eyed little woman was installed in the house. Accepting her husband's story and her own statement, her life had not been wholly respectable, but she brought refinement into the animal cage. A new carpet lay soft and bright upon the floor. The windows, now curtained, no longer looked like browless eyes staring into cold vacancy. The dinner table lost the air and the appearance of a feed trough. Not in words nor in sighs, but in a hundred ways, she proved the sincerity of her repentance. The autumn lasted a long time, and wise men said that it would end in a snarl, and it did, for winter came in a night, like a pack of howling wolves. But their cold teeth did not bite through the walls of Milford's sitting-room. Black eyes had looked after the work of a carpenter and a paper-hanger.