"Kelly's time is wrinkling," he laughed. "Here comes Mrs. Kelly Jones, with worriment on her brow." Bill ran his inky fingers through his hair. Something was troubling him. "Jap," he said as he walked toward the door of the composing room, "that skunk of a Jones----" "Who? Kelly?" "Oh, no." Bill wheeled, and his face was deadly earnest. "Kelly's not a skunk, even when he has soaked up all the rotgut in Barton. But I had Kelly Jones in the back of my head, just the same, when I mentioned the honorable Editor of the Barton _Standard_. It's getting under my skin, Jap, the way he has of tempting these Bloomtown fools over to his filthy village to get the booze we won't let 'em have at home, and then holding them up to ridicule when they make asses of themselves." "It's one of the angles of this problem that I haven't figured out yet," Jap said earnestly. "Do you think it would do any good to go gunning for Jones?" "I've thought of that possibility several times," and Bill's tone was not entirely humorous. Jap shoved his stool to the case. As he climbed upon it, he sighed uneasily. It had been sixteen months since Wilfred Jones turned the neat trick that left Bill disconsolate, and still the venom lingered in the bereft boy's heart. To Jap, with his standard of womanhood established by Flossy and Isabel, the thing was monstrous, inconceivable. And yet it was a fact to be faced. "We'll have to get busy, Bill," he said. "We've got enough job work on the hooks to keep us up till midnight for a week. We haven't done a thing the last month but elect Wat Harlow." "I hope to grab he won't run for another office till I have six sons to help me," Bill snorted. Jap heaved a sudden sigh of relief. "Looking out again, Bill?" he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the vacant photograph frame above Bill's case. CHAPTER XXI It was the day after Thanksgiving. Bill was twirling the chambers of his revolver around. His face was grim. Jap halted in the door of their bedroom. "Going gunning for Jones?" he asked lightly. Bill turned, and the black look on his face startled Jap. "I am," he said deliberately, "and I will come back to jail or in my coffin." Jap caught the revolver from his hand. "Bill," he said sharply, "wake up!" Bill threw a letter to him, and continued his hasty toilet. Jap read: "Dear Will,-- "Come to me. I am almost crazy. Wilfred accused me of giving you information against his father that beat him in the election, and he struck me in the mouth. He said he only married me to spite you, and he hates me. I will meet you at the section house, where the train slows up for the switch, at six o'clock. I want you to take me away, I don't care where. I don't love anybody but you, and I can't live with Wilfred another night. I don't care whether anybody ever speaks to me again, if you will take me and love me. "Your distracted ROSALIE."