“You mustn't deceive yourself. There are some things that can't be forgotten.” “How did _I_ know what I was saying? A man isn't always responsible.” “I heard you,” said Nancy. “There are things we say when we are raging mad at a person, and there are things we say when we think them the dirt under our feet. You kept him down with your dirt-shovel, and you called him--what I can't ever forget.” “And is this the only hitch between us?” “I should think it was enough. Who despises my father despises me.” “But I do not despise him,” Travis did not scruple to assert. “The quarrel was not mine; and I'm not a ditch-man any longer. I will apologize to your father.” “Oh, I know it costs you nothing to apologize. You don't mind father--an old man like him! You'd take him in, and give him his meals, and pat him on the head as you would the house-dog that bites because he's old and cross. Well, I'll let you know I don't want you to forgive him, and apologize, and all that stuff. I want you to get even with him.” “Be satisfied,” said Travis. “The only count I have against your father is through his daughter. There is no way for me to get even with you. And when you have spoiled a man's life just for one angry word”-- “Not angry,” she interrupted. “I could have forgiven you that.” “For one word, then. And you call it square when you have given me a piece of information to use for myself, against you! I will go back now and go to work. They can't say I haven't earned my wages on this beat.” He looked down at her, longing to gather her, with all her thorny sweetness, to his breast; but her attitude forbade him. “Can't we shake hands?” he said. They shook hands in silence, and he went back and finished the night in the ranks of the shovelers,--to work well, to love well, and to get his discharge at last. Yet Travis was not sorry that he had taken those five miles below Glenn's Ferry: he had found something to work for. The company's officials marveled, as the weeks went by, that nothing was heard of Solomon Lark. He had ever been the sturdiest beggar for damages on the ditch. If he lacked an occasion he could invent one; he was known to be a fanatic on the subject of the small farmers' wrongs: yet now, with a veritable claim to sue for, the old protestant was dumb. Had Solomon turned the other cheek? There were jokes about it in the office; they looked to have some fun with Solomon yet. In the early autumn the joking ceased. There was a final reason for the old man's silence,--Solomon was dead. His ranch was rented to a Chinese vegetable-gardener who bought water from the ditch. The company, through its officials, was disposed to recognize this unspoken claim that had perished on the lips of the dead. They made an estimate, and offered Nancy Lark a fair sum in consideration of her father's losses by the ditch.