hrough a pocket of them gathered in the lea of
some protruding rock by vagrant winds. Then all was still. He did not
guess that Holton had been anxious that these sounds should reach him;
that he had stumbled down the trail with awkward feet with no thought in
his mind but to be certain that the sounds should reach him. Such was
the case, however, and, after he felt sure that the crouching
mountaineer above must be convinced that he had gone on to the valley,
the old man turned, catlike, re-ascended with a skill as great as
Lorey's own, and, with not a sound to warn the mountaineer that he had
retraced any of his steps, took cautious place behind a rock upon the
very edge of the open space where, when Layson came, he felt quite sure
a tragedy would be enacted.

Then Layson came blithely up the trail. He had gone through the
engineer's report with care. The coal prospects included the girl's
land. He was full of rare elation at thought of the good luck which had
descended on the little mountain-maid, full of pleasant plans for a
bright future from none of which she was omitted.

His dreams were rudely interrupted as Joe Lorey stepped ominously from
behind the rock where he had waited for him.

"Hold up your hands!" the mountaineer commanded, with his rifle
levelled at the advancing youth.

"Joe Lorey!" exclaimed Layson.

"You know what air between us. Your time air come. If you want to pray,
do it quick, for my finger air itchin' to pull th' trigger."

Layson's blood and breeding told, in this emergency. He did not flinch a
whit. "I'm ready," he said calmly. "I'm not afraid to die, though it's
hard to meet death at the hands of a coward."

"Coward!" said the mountaineer, amazed. "You call me that?"

"The man who shoots another in cold blood, giving him no chance for his
life, deserves no better name."

This appealed to Lorey. So had his father died--at the hands of one who
killed him in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life. "You shan't
die callin' me that!" he cried. He leaned his rifle against a nearby
rock, threw his knife upon the ground beside it, pulled off his coat,
and thus, unarmed, advanced upon his enemy. "We're ekal now," he said
with grim intensity, and pointed to the chasm through which ran the
stream which made Madge Brierly's refuge an island. "That gully air a
hundred feet straight down," he said, "an' its bottom air kivered with
rocks. When we're through, your body or mine'll lay there