"Learned? Yes. And I, too. I've been learning my lessons, too,--they were long and hard and I sulked at some of them, but I'm more tractable new."
"I had my own hard conning," Kate said softly. "You never could have done what I did, Mr. Wander. You couldn't have been cruel to an old father."
"Honora has made all that clear to me," said Karl with compassion. "When we are fighting for liberty we forget the sufferings of the enemy."
There was a little pause. Then Karl spoke.
"But I forgot to begin at the beginning in telling you about my made-over mining town. Yet you seemed to know about it."
"Oh, I read about it in the papers. Your experiment is famous. All of the people I am associated with, the welfare workers and sociologists, are immensely interested in it. That's one of the problems now--how to use the hobo, how to get him back into an understanding of regulated communities."
"Put him in charge," laughed Karl. "The answer's easy. Treat him like a fellow-man. Don't annoy him by an exhibition of your useless virtues."
"I never thought of that," said Kate.
They turned their backs on the straggling town and faced the peaks. Presently they skirted the Williston River which thundered among boulders and raged on toward the low-lying valley. From above, the roar of the pines came to them, reverberant and melancholy.
"What sounds! What sounds!" cried Kate.