o holds it?"

"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated
to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got
a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in
lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or
cost that falls only on me. Those old threats--yes, I know how fiercely
they are still meant--and they have always had their weight; but they've
never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and
endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an
hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."

"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"

"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best
enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own
standards."

"Oh, I see. I believe I see."

"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of
the finest boat----"

"Dat eveh float'--" she tenderly put in.

"Yes, on this great river."

"Oh, Captain Courteney----"

"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or
end." There was a silence, and then--

"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song,
"you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."

"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez,
having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg----"

"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you
shan't go unarmed."

"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least
fear of violence on either side."

"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else
you shan't."

"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one
perfect man--we needn't be pious to say it--set about to conquer the
human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any
other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result--a
poor, lame beginning of the result--is what we call Christendom."

"You shan't die victorious for me."

"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."

"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on
her folded hands.

"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of
words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only
confident of victory."

"No matter. You _won't_ go ashore at Natchez.