Nor do I know that it is only pity which influences them.

Some of you take an exasperating delight in picturesque rascality." Miss Barrington laughed, and fearlessly met her uncle's glance.

"Then you don't believe in penitence ?" "Well," said the Colonel dryly, "I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen.

There are, my dear, plenty of them still." Barrington spoke almost fiercely, and then flushed through his tan, when the girl looking into his eyes smiled a little.

"Yes," she said, "I can believe it, because I owe a good deal to one of them." The ring in the girl's voice belied the smile, and the speech was warranted, for, dogmatic, domineering, and vindictive as he was apt to be occasionally, the words he had used applied most fitly to Colonel Barrington.