It had been the annual custom of many years for Mr. and Mrs. Force to entertain the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Peters to dinner at Mondreer on New Year's Day. The custom had not been neglected on the present occasion, and the rector of All Faith and his wife were expected to come. Young Dr. Ingle, in consideration of his betrothal to Natalie Meeke, had been invited to meet the Peters. These were the only arrangements for keeping New Year's Day at Mondreer. As there was no church service on that day, the party from the rectory arrived early in the forenoon, for the people of the neighborhood, even on festive occasions, kept the healthful, old-fashioned hours, and dined soon after noon. The rector and his wife were a fine old couple, without children at home, and very much devoted to each other. Mrs. Anglesea, efflorescent in a cardinal-red damasse silk, and heavy gold jewelry, seized upon the clerical pair instantly as her own especial prey, because they were new acquaintances, who had not heard the story of her marriage, her robbery and her desertion by her husband, from her own lips. Mrs. Anglesea took so much pleasure in telling her tale that Wynnette, in her pungent way, said that the lady from the Wild Cats' Gulch was a reincarnation of the spirit of the Ancient Mariner, with the variation that to her every new acquaintance was a "wedding guest," to whom she was bound to tell her story. And that for all the sufferings the injured wife had endured she found full compensation in the narration of her great wrongs, and in the abuse of the enormous villainy of her husband. And facts really bore out Wynnette's theory. "Now! What do you think of Angus Anglesea for a gentleman and an officer?" demanded Mrs. Anglesea of the rector and his wife, when she had finished her relation. "We must not judge. We must forgive," said the mild minister. "'Forgive!'" echoed the lady from the mines. "'Forgive!' I like that; but you are a man, parson, and of course you will take sides with a man, and want me to 'forgive' him. Set him up with it, and you, too! But I'll put it to your ole 'oman here," she added, turning to the rector's wife. "Now see here, ma'am. Take it home, and put yourself in my place. Suppose now that your ole man, the parson there, had a-gone, and a-married of you, and then a-gone and robbed of you of all your money, and levanted off some'er's and married some other 'oman. Could you have 'forgive' him? I put it to yourself now. Answer me." But the mere hypothesis that the venerable and reverend Dr. Peters could ever by any possibility have been guilty of such misdemeanors was so overwhelming, not to say paralyzing, that the minister's wife could only drop her jaw, open her mouth, and stare. "I'll forgive that devil after he is well hanged, and not a half a second before. 'Cause it wouldn't be safe, nohow."