Luella, banished since the fateful party that had set the gossips talking, greeted him with hysterical chatter. Hez poked a cold nose ingratiatingly into his palm. Even Sister Mitchell, long ago retrieved from her winter quarters under a rock by the cellar, crawled from under the stove and craned her long neck at him, begging for something green. Bill looked in the cupboard and found nothing eatable. He had been away too long, he remembered now. He had lost count of the time, so completely had his mind been given to meet a humiliating situation in such a way that he need never be ashamed to look any man in the face. Well, his menagerie was hungry and begging for food. He went out again, hurried to the nearest grocery and bought what he wanted, careless of the curious looks he excited. He stopped at Tommy's Place and told Tommy that he wouldn't be needed, close-herding anybody. The auditor had reported to Bill that he could find nothing wrong with the books, and there was not much chance of getting hold of any actual proof of crookedness against either Rayfield or Emmett. "And are yuh still buyin' Parowan stock, Mr. Dale?" Tommy's soft voice was softer, more plaintive than ever. "As long as there's a share out, I'm in the market," Bill answered shortly--defiantly too, though there was no reason for defiance. He returned to his camp and fed Sister Mitchell her lettuce, Luella a cookie, and flung a stale mutton chop outside the door for Hez. He did not cook anything for himself. He was too heartsick to think of food. The whole damnable robbery, the treachery,--and then, Doris! He tried to recall what words had passed between them; to remember just what Doris had said. But then he knew that it was not the words; she had not actually said anything awful, he suspected. But her tones, the hard, condemning look in her eyes! He could see her again, trembling with anger because he was spending money to keep his name--and hers--above reproach among men. In all the time since they were married, Bill had never seen Doris like that. The months had not been altogether peaceful, to be sure. Doris had frequently found something in her husband that required correcting, had enumerated his faults to him many, many times. She had often hurt Bill, had made him angry, so that he would go away until he forgot it. But there had been nothing like this. "Damn money, if that's what it does to people!" Bill groaned aloud, when Luella recalled him to his surroundings by crying, "Give us a light! Give us a light!" He lighted a lantern and hung it from the hook on the ridgepole, and for a long while he stood staring at the cased saxophone. Only two years ago he had dreamed of learning to play that thing,--to forward his wooing of Doris!