"Well, what are you going to do about it—even if there _is_ any danger?" said Wilson. "Get a drink in him, and Langdon, like his father, will fight at the drop of a hat. Conscience? He hasn’t any. I sometimes wonder why the Almighty made them like they are, and other men so different, for it is only the men who are not bothered by conscience that have any fun in this life. One of the Chesters could drive a light-hearted woman to suicide and sleep like a log the night she was buried. Haven’t I heard the old man laugh about Ann Boyd, and all she’s been through? Huh! But I’m not afraid of that little girl’s fate. She will take care of herself, and don’t you forget it." "Well, I’m sorry for her," said Masters, "and I’m going to try to meet her. I’m tough, George—I’ll play a game of cards and bet on a horse, and say light things to a pretty girl when she throws down the bars—but I draw the line at downright rascality. Once in a while I think of home and my own folks." "Now you are a-talking." And Wilson hurried away to a woman who sat in a chair holding a bolt of calico in her arms, as if it were her first-born child and the other women were open kidnappers. Masters stood motionless in the doorway, his eyes on the dusty road that stretched on towards Jane Hemingway’s house. "Yes, she’s in bad, _bad_ hands," he said; "and she is the first—I really believe she’s the first that ever hit me this hard." VIII At dusk that day Ann Boyd went out to search for a missing cow. She crossed the greater part of her stretch of meadow-land in the foggy shadows, and finally found the animal mired to the knees in a black bog hidden from view by the high growth of bulrushes. Then came the task of releasing the patient creature, and Ann carried rails from the nearest fence, placing them in such a way that the cow finally secured a substantial footing and gladly sped homeward to her imprisoned calf. Then, to escape the labor of again passing through the clinging vines and high grass of the marsh, Ann took the nearest way to the main road leading from the store on to Jane Hemingway’s cottage. She had just reached the little meeting-house, and a hot flush of anger at the memory of the insult passed upon her there was surging over her, when, happening to glance towards the graveyard in the rear of the building, she saw Virginia Hemingway and Langdon Chester, quite with the air of lovers, slowly walking homeward along a path which, if more rugged, led more directly towards the girl’s home. Ann Boyd started and then stared; she could hardly credit the evidence of her sight—Virginia Hemingway and the scapegrace son of that man, of all men, together!