Horton, which is a family name on mother's side, not thinking what the
consequence might be. Now, in payment for this first breach of the law,
I must at least give up all my schemes here and retreat. I may be
prosecuted; I may even go to prison, like my father did."

"Surely not!" he protested. "Who is there to know it, to lay a charge
against you?"

"Such person is not wanting in the miserable plot of my life," she
answered. "I will reach him soon in my sorry tale."

"Boyle!" Slavens said, as if thinking aloud. "He's the man!"

"You take the name from my mouth," she told him. "He has threatened me
with prosecution. Perjury, he says it would be called, and prison would
be the penalty."

"It might be so here," he admitted.

"I met Jerry Boyle about five years ago, when father was in Congress.
His father was at that time Senator from this state. We lived in
Washington, and Jerry Boyle was then considered a very original and
delightful young man. He was fresh in from the range, but he had the
polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now
to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed
current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a
butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I--I am afraid
that I encouraged him to do it at first.

"But he drank and gambled, and got into brawls. He stabbed an attache of
the Mexican Legation over a woman, and the engagement to marry him which
I had entered into was broken. I was foolish in the first instance, but
I plead the mitigation of frivolity and youth. My heart was not in it. I
beg you to believe, Dr. Slavens, that my heart was not in it at all."

She looked at him with pleading sincerity, and from her eyes his heart
gathered its recesses full of joy.

"I need no further assurance of that," he smiled.

"You are generous. It was on the afternoon of the day that followed your
disappearance from Comanche that Boyle came into camp there. I had not
forgotten him, of course, nor his influential position in this state;
but I never thought of meeting him there. It was a sickening shock to
me. I denied his protestations of acquaintanceship, but it passed off
poorly with all of them who were present, except William Bentley,
generous gentleman that he is."

"He is so," testified Slavens.

"I left Comanche because I was afraid of him, but he rode post the night
that I engaged passage and beat me