Unusual happenings had
been its portion ever since it had been the rail-head of the Great
Transcontinental Line, and many enterprising men, instead of moving on
with the railway, when it ceased to be the rail-head, settled there and
gave the place its character. The town had never been lawless, although
some lawless people had sojourned there.
It was too busy a place to be fussing about little things, or tearing
people's characters to pieces, or gossiping even to the usual degree;
yet in its history it had never gossiped so much as it had done since
the Mazarines had come.
From the first the vast majority of folk had sided with Louise and
denounced Mazarine. They knew well she had married too young to be self-
seeking or intriguing; and, in any case, no woman in Askatoon or yet in
the West, could have conceived of a girl marrying "the ancient one from
the jungle," as Burlingame had called him.
Burlingame could never have been on the side of the Ten Commandments
himself, even with a sure and certain hope of happiness on earth, and in
Heaven also, guaranteed to him.
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