"They do not. Lots of them can't, but you--you're always capable; that's what makes you so wonderful, Dorothy!" He pulled his horse closer to hers, meaning to put his arm around her, but he dared not attempt it, when her dress brushed his sleeve. "Yes?" She was trembling now far more than when she had faced the Rexhills. "What is it?" His arm dropped to his side, and he suddenly became acutely conscious of his appearance, what with his blood-matted hair; his blood-stained and soiled face; his generally woe-begone and desperate state. At least, before he risked his future on such a question, he ought to make himself as presentable as he could. "Nothing." "But--" She looked at him curiously. "You were going to say something, weren't you?" "Yes; but I'm not going to do it until I can get to a hair-brush, and a wash-basin, and a clean shirt," he answered lugubriously. "What I've got on my mind is a church-going sentiment and I want to be in church-going clothes." The expression of his countenance contributed more than his words to the humor he strove for, and she laughed at him, merrily with her mouth, very tenderly with her eyes. "There's the house." She pointed ahead. "Even though I'm riding bareback, I can beat you to it. Come on!" Once Wade was within reach of food, his hunger became insistent, and he could not wait for the cook to prepare a meal of fried chicken. He foraged in the larder beforehand, and then did full justice to the meal put before him. By the time this was over, Mrs. Purnell arrived, and he had no chance to get into his "church-going clothes," as he called them. He had to tell the old lady all that had befallen him. "I never would have thought it of that Miss Rexhill," Mrs. Purnell declared. "It wasn't Miss Rexhill, it was her father and Race Moran," Dorothy interposed. "Or the Senator either, speaking merely from the looks of him," her mother retorted. "And think of the position he holds, a Senator of the United States!" "That's no hall-mark of virtue these days," Wade laughed. "Well, it should be. If we're to have people like him running the Nation, there's no telling where we'll end." "It just goes to show how an honest man, for I think Rexhill was an honest man when I first knew him, can go wrong by associating with the wrong people," said Wade. He could not forget his earlier friendship for the Rexhills, and to him the word friendship meant much. "He not only got in with a bad crowd, but he got going at a pace that wrung money out of him every time he moved. Then, in the last election, he was hit hard, and I suppose he felt that he had to recoup, even if he had to sacrifice his friends to do it. We mustn't judge a man like that too hard. We live differently out here, and maybe we don't understand those temptations. I'm mighty glad they've gone away. I can get right down to work now, without any qualms of conscience." "But think of you, Dorothy, out all night in those mountains!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed.