Dorinda smiled, but her eyes were tired and wrinkles showed in her ruddy skin. If they knew! If only they knew! she reflected; and she wondered if many other reputations were founded like hers upon a flattering ignorance of fact. "Tell your wife it is hard things that wear well," she responded. "After all, somebody has to bear the burden, and I am better able to do it than any of the rest of you, except perhaps," she concluded indifferently, "James Ellgood." "Yas'm. I'm downright glad you take that sensible view of it," the sheriff replied, as soon as he was capable of speaking. "Everybody about here knows that when they come to you, they'll get justice." Justice! That was Nathan's favourite word, she remembered. She could hear him saying as plainly as if he were present, "Any man has a right, Dorinda, to demand justice." Strange how often Nathan's words, which she had scarcely heeded when he was alive, returned to her in moments of difficulty or indecision. Only in the last few years had she begun to realize her mental dependence upon Nathan. "I reckon we can manage to get him over here to-morrow evening," Samuel Larch was saying. "Thar ain't no call for you to send all the way to the poorhouse. Maybe Reuben Fain will let us have that auto-wagon of his." "Oh, I'll come for him in the big car in the morning," Dorinda replied. "It isn't my way to do things by halves." The sheriff nodded. "Naw'm, it ain't yo' way to do things by halves," he echoed thankfully. After the two men were out of sight, she turned apologetically to John Abner. Although he said little, for he was never a great talker, she had observed that his face wore a look of severe disapprobation. "There wasn't anything else to do, was there, John Abner?" she asked, in the deferential tone she reserved for a crisis. It was not often that Dorinda deferred, and on the rare occasions when she did so, she was able to administer a more piquant flattery than the naturally clinging woman has at her command.