Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/176

 a taste of the winter wind, and they gave up. Sometimes the unattractive one found the river the only way. Always they wanted a warm fire for their pretty shins and the devil for butler. They couldn't hang on just a little longer, could they? They had to give up in the middle of the fight—and always the pretty ones.

His school-teacher! How many times had he watched her trim feet flit one-two-three past his cellar window! And here she was and there he was! She had poked her curious fingers into the web, and hadn't got away quite free. A low crook with women, and all his money couldn't change that.

"Well, somewhere between here and San Francisco I'm going to get you, Handsome-Is. I know your breed. You won't give up until you're broken up; and I'm going to turn that little trick."

After a while he remembered her tears, and the taste of life became less bitter. There might be a block or two in the puzzle that wasn't in its right place. A fragment of the prayer recurred to him. "Give me always strength to be good." He slid off the rail. Maybe that line was open to a new interpretation. Sooner or later she would tell him; it wasn't square to judge a case without having all the evidence. He knew what the matter was, he had seen too much of the seamy side of life, and when confronted by such problems as this his outlook was on the bias, cynical, despite the fact that he knew that circumstantial evidence had ruined more women than it had hanged men.