He walked about on the edge of the throng for several moments undecidedly. "What the hell is the matter with me?" he muttered. "Why can't I decide on a thing as simple as that and be done with it? It is for Tilly's lasting good. It would wipe the whole rotten thing out at once, and stop the damned wagging tongues sooner than anything else. It would sting sharply, like a doctor's knife, but it would cure the trouble. If I don't do something it will hang over her as long as she lives. I spoiled her chances by dropping into her life--here is a chance to drop out of it. I'm leaving her for good and all, anyway, so why not make a clean job of it?" He felt that he had decided at last, and he went back to the reporter. "Are you taking names?" he asked, in a voice the matter-of-fact tone of which surprised himself. "Yes. Got any?" The writer did not look up from his rapidly moving pencil. "Two friends of mine." "All right, wait a minute." The pencil was now rapidly producing shorthand dots, curves, and dashes. The red sky above the gorge held John's eyes. As in a picture of radiating flame he saw his little wife as he had seen her the morning he had unknowingly kissed her farewell forever on the door-step of the cottage as he stood, dinner-pail in hand, the sun just rising above the hills. In spite of his self-control and a belief in his stolidness, a lump swelled in his throat. "She deserves a better deal out of the deck than to be tied to the memory of a man like me," he thought. "When she reads my name in the papers I'll be dead to her, dead and cremated. After all, it can't be worse than the other." "Well, well," the reporter said, looking up, "you say you have lost some friends?" "Yes, two--a man and a little girl, in the coach just ahead of this one." "Their names and addresses, please. I'm in a devil of a rush--using railroad telegraph, and it is packed with official business. Got an opening now, but may lose it any moment. Mention ages and business, if you know them." "John Trott, twenty years old, Ridgeville, Georgia, brick-mason." "All right--two t's in Trott, eh? Well, and the other one?" "Dora Boyles--B-o-y-l-e-s," slowly spelled John; "age about nine, orphan, same town--Ridgeville, Georgia." "Thanks. Is that all?" asked the reporter. "That is all," and, afraid of being further questioned, John turned and stalked away. CHAPTER XXXVII