utiful
and good. You don't want to save her soul"--he pointed to the Bible,
which the old man had snatched from his pocket again--"you don't want to
save her soul. You don't care whether she's happy in this world or the
next; what you want is what you can see of her, for your life in this
world only. You want--"

The old man interrupted him with a savage emotion which Jonas Billings
said made him look like "a satyre."

"I want to save her from the wrath to come," he said. "This here holy
Book gives me my rights. It says, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and the
trouble I have comes from you that's stole my wife, that's put her soul
in jeopardy, robbed my home--"

"Robbed your home!" interjected Orlando quietly, but with a voice of
suppressed passion. "Robbed your home! Why, the other day you tried to
prevent her entering it. You wanted to shut her out. After she had lived
with you all those years, you believed she lied to you when she told you
the truth about that night on the prairie; but her innocence was proved
by one who was there all the time, and for shame's sake you had to let
her in. But she couldn't stand it. I don't wonder. A lark wouldn't be at
home where a vulture roosted."

"And so the lark flies away to the cuckoo," snarled the old man, with
flecks of froth gathering at the corners of his mouth; for the sight of
this handsome, long-limbed youth enraged him.

"Give her back to me. You know where she is," he persisted. "You've got
her hid away. That's why you've sent your mother East--so's she wouldn't
know, though from what I see, I shouldn't think it'd have made much
difference to her."

Exclamations broke from the crowd. It was the wild West. It was a
country where, not twenty years before, men did justice upon men without
the assistance of the law; and the West understood that the dark insult
just uttered would in days not far gone have meant death. The onlookers
exclaimed, and then became silent, because a subtle sense of tragedy
suddenly smothered their voices. Upon the silence there broke a little
giggling laugh. It came from lips that were one in paleness with a face
grown stony.

"I ought to kill you," Orlando said quietly after a moment, yet scarcely
above a whisper. "I ought to kill you, Mazarine, but that would only be
playing your game, for the law would get hold of me, and the girl that
has left you would be sorrowful, for she knows I love her, though I
never told her so. She'd be sorry to see