"She is ill, you see?" The parson had seen. "She may be ill some time. Would it be asking too much of you to look after her?" The bachelor showed in that. Taylor realized from the Benedict's greater knowledge that it was asking a great deal, but still not too much. He assured Cairness that she should be cared for. "She was a captive among the Chiricahuas up in the Sierra Madre. She's had a hard time of it. That and the return march have been too much for her." The parson expressed pity--and felt it, which is more. "Yes," Cairness said, "of course it's hard luck, but she's deserved it all, and more too. You may as well know the whole thing now. It's only fair. She and her husband were the cause of the Kirby massacre. Drove off the stock from the corrals and left them no escape." His teeth set. The little man gasped audibly. "Good God!" he said, "I--" he stopped. "I rather thought that might be too much for even you," said Cairness. "No, no; it's a good deal, but it ain't too much. Not that it could be more, very well," he added, and he glanced furtively at the woman within, who had stretched out on the lounge with her face to the wall. Mrs. Taylor was fanning her. "You will still keep her then?" Cairness wished to know. He would still keep her, yes. But he did not see that it would be in the least necessary to tell his wife the whole of the woman's iniquity. It took quite all his courage, after they had gotten her safely in bed, to remind her that this was the same woman who had gone off with the Mexican. Mrs. Taylor folded her hands in her lap, and simply looked at him. "Well?" said he, questioningly, setting his mouth. It answered to the duellist's "On guard!" She had seen him set his mouth before, and she knew that it meant that he was not to be opposed. Nevertheless there was a principle involved now. It must be fought for. And it would be the first fight of their marriage, too. As he had told Cairness once, she was very amiable. "Well," she answered, "I think you have done an unspeakable thing, that is all." "Such as--" "To have brought an abandoned woman into our home." "If her presence blackens the walls, we will have them whitewashed." But she was not to be turned off with levity. It was a serious matter, involving consequences of the sternest sort. Mrs. Taylor was of the class of minds which holds that just such laxities as this strike at the root of society. "It is not a joke, Joshua. She pollutes our home." "Are you afraid she will contaminate me?" he asked. He was peering at her over the top of a newspaper. She denied the idea emphatically. "Baby, then?" Equally absurd. "Or the nurse?" It was too foolish to answer. "Then," said the Reverend Taylor, laying down the paper, "you must be scared for yourself." "Never!" she declared; it was merely because she could not breathe the same air with that creature. "I wonder, my dear, what sort of air you breathed in your mother's restaurant at meal times?"