rom. Hence the chunks of tobacco.

There was one to whom this sudden influx of visitors was distasteful in
the highest degree. That one was Marian Selwood. To find herself
exalted by them into a heroine, to be repeatedly congratulated on her
splendid nerve, and complimented on her wonderful pluck and so forth,
was absolutely sickening to her. As she remarked bitterly to Renshaw,
"What was there to brag about, in that she, securely concealed--lurking
ambushed, in fact--did shoot down a wretched man advancing in the open?
It was a repulsive necessity, but not a thing to be proud of, and for
her part the sooner she could forget it the better."

To which he had replied that, while agreeing with her on the main
principle, the way in which to look at the matter was this. She had
been called upon unexpectedly to fill a critical position, one demanding
both courage and judgment--and inasmuch as she had displayed both those
qualities, and had shown herself abundantly equal to the situation, she
had every reason to feel satisfied with herself. Which judicious
reassurance, coming from the quarter it did, tended not a little to
soothe poor Marian's troubled mind.

For a strange depression had come upon her since the occurrence--a
strange reaction in no wise due to the lurid incidents of the tragedy
itself. The very firmness and resolution she had displayed were as gall
and wormwood to her recollections. What a figure she must have cut! A
mere fighting Amazon, a masculine virago, endowed with a modicum of
brute courage and healthy nerves! Was it her fault? Thus would she
lash her mind into an agony, what time people were showering
congratulations and compliments upon her.

Ah, but then the exquisite sweetness of that lonely midnight vigil--
alone with him, in momentary expectation of impending peril, their
faculties of vision strained to the uttermost--gazing forth into the
sickly moonlight watching for the coming of the murderous foe. A
reminiscence which would haunt most women for the rest of their lives,
causing them to start appalled from their dreams. Not so this one.
That weird midnight hour, the hush of expectancy, their common peril,
her fears on his account; ah, that was something to look back upon,
something that should make her heart thrill--but not with terror--for
many and many a day.

Yet the iron was in her soul. Nothing could blot out the repellent
mental photograph she had taken of herself. It mi