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THAT ROYLE GIRL

lips tightening and her eyes bright. "I got you, I told you. The law is civilization—break the law, and fail to punish, and how long will the city stand—how long will there be civilization? I heard you. Well, who's breaking your law? Not Ket and me! We're two of the people of your State, as I told you that night, just as much as you are—if Ket can't name his father, much less his grandfather or John Adams' administration or Antietam, and if I've never lived under one roof six months in all my life.

"'Where do you live?' you asked me, that night, after I'd come through to you clean and told you not a thing in the place was paid for but my clothes, and that Dads was dizzy and mamma was doped.

"'Live? Why, here,' I told you.

"'Yes,' you said. 'But where's your home?' you said, when you were in it and knew you were in it!"

"I didn't!" cried Calvin.

"Then where'd you suppose you were?" she demanded and caught her lips between her teeth and bit to stop their trembling. She swung to the window, clasping the sill and clinging to it; and Calvin shrank with self-reproach, at his hurt of her which he had never suspected.

Suddenly it occurred to him that she had pride in that home of a rented room filled with furniture got by fraud. Pride in that place! But it was a pride and loyalty which had not prevented her from appreciating his home. How had she found the pictures printed two years ago? he wondered.

However it had happened after finding them she had felt for them as had no one else here; and as no one else to-day in court, she had "got" him.

"Miss Royle," he started.

"What?"