He forgot about the crumpled canvas in the narrow marble basin. He ran for the claw that held the whip, caught it and twisted it back. With almost one and the same movement he wrested the rawhide from that shaking claw and sent the bony figure tumbling back over a headless winged lion in marble. “You muckers! Oh, you muckers!” he cried out, reverting in his excitement to the language of his school-days. Then he turned back to the easel. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” he kept mumbling as he tugged at the knotted cotton rope, for he could see two stripes of red across the whiteness of the stooping slender back. The girl’s face, when he had set her free, was as white as the shoulders from which the clothing had been stripped. She said nothing. She did not even raise her eyes to his. But she drew back as he essayed a futile effort to lift her fallen waist up about her naked shoulders. His hands were shaking and the thick air stung his throat. He turned about, dazed, as he heard the renewed shrill duet of voices in prayer. The two frenzied old women were on their knees side by side in front of the smoking sarcophagus. They were on their knees, swaying back and forth and calling on God to cleanse their house of its lewdness. In the sarcophagus lay nothing but a layer of smoldering ashes, subsiding slowly, like melting snow. And Conkling, who knew by this time entirely what it meant, felt a blind wave of hate untouched by pity well through his body. “You fools!” he gasped. “You hopeless fools!” He was even sobbing a little with the nauseous reaction of it all, and he tried to smother his shame by a parade of ferocity as he turned back to the white-faced girl. “They’ve made their nest, the muckers, and now they can lie in it!” he cried, as the girl shrank away a little to stare at the intoning pair still on their knees. She, he remembered as he in turn stared at the youthful face with the prematurely tragic look in its eyes, was all that he could get out of it now. But it was enough, God knew! And the time for claiming his own was at hand. “You must come with me,” he said as he reached for her. He felt the weight of her body on his arm, weak and relaxed, as he groped his way toward the stairhead. He thought for a moment that she had fainted. But she said very quietly, “This way,” as he made a wrong turn in the gloom of the lower hallway. THE END * * * * * OTHER BOOKS BY MR. STRINGER The House of Intrigue The Door of Dread The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep The Prairie Wife The Prairie Mother Transcriber’s Notes: