“Yes, she’s gone there to stay awhile with Mrs. Dudley. I didn’t want her to, but she would go; it makes it mighty lonesome here, but she’ll be happier up there, I reckon. Mrs. Dudley took a likin’ to Mary, and wants to give her a better chance fer an ejication and other things than she can have here. So I reckon it’s all right, though I didn’t see at first how I could git along without her.” All at once Clayton’s heart seemed to shrivel and shrink. He fumbled with the yellow mane of the broncho and with the reins that swung against its neck. When he spoke after a little, trying to go on, his voice was husky. “That woman is—” “Yes, I allow Mrs. Dudley is a fine woman!” Clayton’s resolution failed utterly. “And she’s smart,” Jasper declared, “smart as a steel-trap; when she talked with me about takin’ Mary, and what she could do fer her, I could see that. She’s mighty good-lookin’, too; though I don’t think anybody can come up in looks to my Mary. I wisht you could have seen her with some of her new fixin’s on, which Mrs. Dudley bought fer her. She was certainly handsome. And she’s goin’ to enjoy herself there, I don’t doubt. I’ve already had a letter from her, tellin’ me how happy she is. I reckon I ought to be willin’ fer her to have things her mother never had, fer she’s fit fer it, and not have to slave as her mother did, and as I’ve always done. Yes, I reckon I’m glad she’s gone; though ’tis a bit lonesome here, fer I ain’t got anybody with me at all now, you see.” Though Curtis Clayton had visited Sloan Jasper for the express purpose of uttering a warning against Sibyl, he permitted Jasper to talk on, and the warning words remained unsaid. Jasper was inexpressibily lonely, now that his daughter was gone; yet it was plain that he would not call her back, and equally plain that he knew she would not return if he called never so loudly. And he was trusting that the thing he could not help was the very best thing for the child he loved. Clayton felt that he could not stir up in the heart of this man a useless, peace-destroying, and perhaps a groundless, distrust. So he rode away as the night shadows were falling, and gathered a great contempt for himself as he returned slowly homeward. He had no right to judge Sibyl, and possibly, very probably, misjudge her, he thought; yet he had a fear, amounting almost to conviction, that she was not a woman to whom should be given the charge and training of such a girl as Mary Jasper. That fear had sent him to Jasper; his retreat seemed a cowardly flight.