It was five minutes later, and the train had stopped for orders at the canyon gateway, when she turned to him to say: "What do you think about Mr. Jeffard now, Dick? Are we all mistaken? or is he the hardened cynic he seems to be?"
Bartrow did not reply on the spur of the moment, as was his custom. When he had reasoned it out, he said:—
"I think we ought to break away from the notion that a man has got to be either all angel or all devil. Jeffard's a human man, like the rest of us. He's done some good things that I know of,—and one pretty bad one; and it's the bad one that is setting the pace for him just now. But, as I once said to Lansdale, I'm betting on the finish. One bad curve needn't spoil a whole railroad."
Myra's hand sought and found his under cover of her wrap. "You are loyalty itself, Dick, and I can't help loving you for it. But you say 'one bad one.' Have you forgotten the Irish girl?"
Dick set his jaw at that, and the big hand closed firmly over the small one.
"When I have to believe that of him, Myra, my faith in my kind will drop back more notches than one. That would make him all devil, don't you see?"
But her charity outran his. "No, Dick; I don't quite see it. It is just one more coil in the puzzle-tangle of good and evil that you spoke of. Connie knows it, and if she can find it in her heart to forgive him"—
There was reverent awe in Bartrow's rejoinder. "Do you mean to say she'd forgive him—that?"
The intermittent clatter and roar of the canyon climb had begun, and in one of the breathing spaces Myra made answer.
"She is one of God's little ones, as Mr. Lansdale said. I think she would forgive him even that." And in the next gap in the clamor, "Did you tell him about Garvin?"