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156 Ten minutes later the old woman came back from the kitchen into the living-room, and found her daughter there alone.

"Is Steve gone?" she asked.

"He's gone, mother."

"I don't care much for Steve."

"Why not?"

"I don't like the look in his eye."

"That's no reason."

"He don't believe in God."

"Lots of people don't."

"Nor religion."

"I don't care much for religion myself."

"The more shame to ye. They say Steve's got a wife up in Boston. Has he?"

"I've never asked him. He's never told me."

"But if he has why don't he live with her?"

"That's his own business."

"It's bad business. There's somethin' wrong about him. I say let Steve Lamar alone. He'll do ye harm."

"Mother, I don't care who he is, or what he is, or what he does, so long as he does what I've asked him to do."

"What've ye asked him to do?"

"That's my secret."

"It's a fool's secret. Some day he'll kill ye."

The angry old woman shuffled back into the kitchen and slammed the door behind her.

At eight o'clock that evening Stephen Lamar entered a saloon on lower Main Street, known as "The Silver Star." It was a favorite gathering place for the mill-workers. It was a place where there was undoubted social equality. And in that respect, as Lamar once said to a crowd there, it overtopped any church in the city.

He was greeted noisily as he went in. Some one, standing at the bar, called out to him to come up and have something.