"Then don't send little Andy back, an' I'll be awful good," she pleaded.
Young sat for some time, one hand on Tessibel's, the other beating a tatoo on the arm of Daddy's wooden rocker.
"I suppose," he said at length, as if speaking to himself, "I'll be highly criticized if any one finds out about this irregular proceeding. Nevertheless—" He turned to Tess. "I'll go quietly to work and see what I can do. In the meantime, dear child, you can't stay here in this house."
"But I promised Daddy I'd take care of Andy here, an' I air goin' to. Him and me can live here all right."
Young sighed. There was the same stubborn tone in her voice she had used in those days when her father was away in prison, and he had argued with her to leave the settlement.
"Well, at any rate," he said after a while, "I'll take time to consider it, and then we'll decide something."
Ten minutes later he was riding slowly up the hill, and as the past panoramied across his mind ... and evolved itself into the present, he shook his head. Tessibel had separated him from his family, had made him a stranger to his best friends. Would she now, by holding to Waldstricker's convicted murderer, deprive him of his honor?