He said harshly: “Good night. And for Heaven’s sake, forget this foolishness. Routt and Hetty.... They’re all right.” She did not answer. He said again: “Good night,” and he turned and went down to the gate, and away. Joan watched him go. She thought she ought to be angry with him, and hurt. She was surprised to discover that she was rather proud of Wint, instead; proud of him for being angry, even at her, for the sake of his friend, and for the sake of Hetty. She was troubled, because she thought he was wrong; but she was infinitely proud, too, because he had stuck by his guns. CHAPTER X THE STREET CARNIVAL Joan’s warning as to Jack Routt, her word as to Hetty, and Wint’s rejection of both warning and advice did not lead to a break between them. They met next day, and Wint had the grace to say to her: “I’m sorry I talked as I did yesterday, last night. I was tired, and--all that. I’m sorry.” “It’s all right,” Joan told him. “It’s natural for you to stick by your friends.” “I needn’t have talked so to you, though.” She laughed, and said he had been all right. “I guess you’ve been imagining you were worse than you really were,” she told him. “It’s quite all right, really.” “But I’m sorry you--dislike Jack,” he said. “He’s an awfully decent sort.” “Is he?” she asked. “Then I’m glad you and he are friends.” “That’s the stuff,” Wint told her. “That’s the way to talk.” Thereafter, for a week or so, life in Hardiston went quietly. V. R. Kite still bided his time; there was no liquor being sold; Ote Runns went home sober, day after day, with a look of desperate longing in his eyes. That sodden man who had embraced Wint in the Weaver House so long, whom Wint had jailed more than once for his drinking, suffered as much as Ote, or more. He came to Wint and unbraided him for what he had done. “It ain’t the way to treat a fellow,” he told Wint, pleading huskily. “You know how it is. I just gotta have a drink, Mister Mayor. I just gotta. I told Mrs. Moody she’s gotta give me a drink, and she told me you wouldn’t let her. You ain’t got a thing against me, now, have you?” The miserable man’s fingers were twitching, his lips twisted and writhed. “If I don’t get a drink, I’m a-going to kill some-buddy, I am.” Wint did not know what to do. He could see at a glance that the man was suffering a very real torment. He had himself never become so soaked with alcohol that his system cried out for it when he abstained; but he knew what torture this might be. He had an idea that candy would alleviate the man’s distress; but the idea seemed to him ridiculous, and he put it aside. Yet there was an obligation upon him to do something.