“She seemed fond of him, too, at first, but it wasn’t long before I could see that it was a clear case of misfit all round. There was lots of excuse for her, for of course it was a hard life, an’ she loved finery an’ pretty things, an’ Jim didn’t have the money to give ’em to her, though he worked early an’ late, an’ did his level best to make somethin’ more than a livin’. “Maybe it would have turned out all right in time if it hadn’t been that one day Jim went to the nearest town to buy some farmin’ implements, an’ fell in there with a fellow he used to know back East, and nothin’ would do him but he must go home with Jim to see how he was fixed. Well, he come, an’ it was a black day for Jim when he set foot on his threshold, for from the minute he saw Milly he hadn’t eyes for nothin’ else, and she bein’ a woman, was mightily set up to think a city man would set such store by her. “He made himself so pleasant an’ so much at home that they begged him to stay all night, an’ long about twelve o’clock he was, or pretended to be, took awful sick. They worked with him till he got better, and wouldn’t hear of his tryin’ to go away next mornin’; so he stayed on, setting on the big rockin’-chair with a pillow behind him an’ talkin’ to Milly while Jim was off at work. He didn’t seem in no particular hurry about goin’, but Jim never ’spicioned for a minute that anything was wrong, for he liked the fellow first-rate, an’ would no more have thought of doubtin’ Milly than he would the Lord that made him. “One evenin’ he came in late, tired an’ hungry, an’ foun’ that his wife—his wife that he loved—had left him and gone away with that devil that he thought was his friend! He went wild for a while. It seemed to him like everything was black around him, an’ there was great splotches of blood before his eyes, an’ he could hear voices that kept a-laughin’ at him an’ callin’ him a fool, an’ the only thing he held fast to was that he must follow ’em to the world’s end and kill the man that had took away all he had. So he tracked ’em, now here, now there, but always they doubled on him, till at las’, when his money was gone, he lost ’em altogether. “Then he came to himself a little, an’ sold his ranch an’ went back to his old home to wait—for he knowed somehow that one day, sooner or later, the Lord would give him his revenge. He worked while he waited, an’ made money an’ got well off, an’ nobody knew nothin’ ’bout his ever bein’ married, so he had somethin’ like peace. But he never forgot, an’, after a while, it seemed like he didn’t feel so hard toward Milly, for he remembered how young she was, an’ how foolish, an’ what a devil she had to deal with; an’ sometimes he could see her with the pretty color all gone from her cheeks, an’ the laugh from her voice, heartbroken an’ deserted.