dden softness. "Rachael cannot
understand, either. I'm sure she intended well, poor soul. Were they all
like Rachael---- But I had no knowledge of her talk with you. Anyway,
please leave me if you feel disposed. Whether I marry Daniel or not should
be no concern of yours. I shall have to find my own trail out. Look! There
go the ducks. I came down to watch them. Now neither of us has any excuse
for staying. Good----"

The hush had tightened into a strange pent stillness like the poise of
earth and sky and beast and bird just before the breaking of a great and
lowering storm. The quick clatter of the ducks' wings somehow alarmed
me--the staring of the children, their eyes directed past us, sharpened my
senses for a new focus. And glancing, I witnessed Daniel nearing--striding
rapidly, straight for the point, a figure portentous in the fading glow,
bringing the storm with him.

She saw, too. Her eyes widened, startled, surveying not him, but me.

"Please go. At once! I'll keep him."

"It is too late now," I asserted, in voice not mine. "I am here first and
I'll go when I get ready."

"You mean to face him?"

"I mean to hear what he has to say, and learn what he intends to do. I
don't see any other way--unless you really wish me to go?"

"No, no!" cried My Lady. "I don't want you to be harmed; but oh, how I
have suffered." All her countenance was suffused--with anger, with shame,
and even with hope. She trembled, gazing at me, and fluctuant.

"So have I, madam," said I, grimly.

"I think," she remarked in quiet tone, "that in a show-down you will best
him. I'm sure of it; yes, I know it. You will play the man. You act cool.
Good! Watch him very close. He'll give you little grace, this time. But
remember this: I'll never, never, never marry him. Rather than be bound to
him I'll deal with him myself."

"It won't be necessary, madam," said I--a catch in my throat; for while I
was all iciness and clamminess, my hands cold and my tongue dry, I felt
that I was going to kill him at last. Something told me; the sheer horror
of it struck through; the inevitable loomed grisly and near indeed.

A panoramic lifetime crowds the brain of a drowning man; that same crowded
my brain during the few moments which swung in to us Daniel, scowling,
masterful, his raw bulk and his long shambling stride never before so
insolent.

From New York and home and peace I traveled clear here to desert, outlawry
and blood--and thence on thro