Pete was young and impressionable. He was clay upon the wheel of Bas Rowlett's domination, and of late he had been much away from home. The father tried to straighten his twisted shoulders and his warped back. He turned his eyes to the west where the fires of sunset were crimson and purple, then he spoke again in a manner of recovered and hard-held self-control. "Ef these things ye tells me be true," he said, "I hev need ter know 'em an' I'm beholden ter ye. Ef they're false ye've done struck me a blow I kain't nuver fergive, an' I don't see how you an' me kin both go on livin'. I aims ter find out fer myself, an' meanwhile--I'll keep my pledge ter ye." He paused, then the leader triumphed over the stricken individual. "Keep right on goin' ter every meetin' ther riders holds," he directed, quietly. "Don't suffer 'em ter suspicion no falsity." But when Sim had left him Hump Doane stood there while the sunset faded, while the afterglow livened and died, while the cold twilight settled. He was thinking of the son he loved and despised, of the soft human metal that had been hammered into debauchery by this other man whom he had trusted. He was acknowledging, too, that if the riders numbered among their secret adherents such men as Bas Rowlett and his own boy, his fight was upon a poison that had struck deeper and more malignantly into the arteries of the community than he had heretofore dreamed. He must talk with Parish Thornton, whose strength and judgment could be trusted. He would see him to-night. But at that point he halted. As yet he could not reveal his unsubstantiated information to another. A pledge of sacredly observed confidence had been the price of his learning these things--and over there at the Thornton house a baby was expected before long. It would be both wise and considerate to defer the interview that must of necessity bring the whole crisis to violent issue until the young father's thoughts were less personally involved. It was a time to make haste slowly. Old Hump Doane laughed bitterly. He was a father himself, and to-night he had learned how the heart of a parent can be battered. But before he went to his bed he had talked with his son, while his son sat cowering. It had been a stormy interview during which Pete had denied, expostulated, and at the end broken down in confession, and when Hump Doane rose he had abandoned that slender shred of hope to which, in the teeth of conviction, he had been clinging, that his boy might still be able to clear himself. "Ye've done lied ter me, an' ye've done broke my heart," declared the hunchback, slowly, "but ye've done confessed--an' I'm too damn weak ter turn ye over ter ther law like my duty demands. Don't nuver go ter no other meetin', an' ef they questions why ye don't come, tell 'em ter ask me! An' now"--the old man crumpled forward and buried his great head in his knotted hands--"an' now git outen my sight fer a spell, fer I kain't endure ther sight of ye!"