her own responsibility in the whole matter. She would prefer not to be known as the sender, and she was apologetic for the small amount. She always had everything but money. The check was for two hundred and fifty dollars.
He put both letter and check carefully back on the bed.
"How did she know about me?"
"I wrote her, Tom. I wrote her about Jake, and I told her what you were doing. But that's all. I didn't ask for a cent."
"And I'm not taking a cent," he said roughly. "I aim to manage without the Dowling money, and you can tell her so for me."
In the small hall below Clare was waiting for him, tapping her absurd heels, and Nellie was not in sight. But either she had listened or Nellie had told her, for she asked at once to see the check.
"I didn't take it."
She stared at him, with two angry spots of color in her cheeks.
"Then you're a fool. Why shouldn't you have it? They'd have let you hang today if they could."
"That's my business, my girl," he told her, and stalked out.
Supper at the Hamels was a painful affair that night. Tom was still furiously angry over Kay's tender of money, and resentful at being where he was. Mrs. Hamel passed the food, making frequent trips to the kitchen; Mr. Hamel ate enormously and noisily, and under the impression that shootings would interest a man just acquitted of one, harked back into long reminiscences of the bad old days when he ran the Last Chance saloon.
"Yes, sir," he would say. "He shot from the doorway and got all three of them in a row as they stood there. Just like stringing fish, it was."
"Pop, for heaven's sake! Let's be cheerful."
It was Tom's first meal with Clare's family, and as it went on he realized that to all of them it had a particular significance. It amounted to what in more sophisticated
