am at the
end."

Still Lot Gordon looked up at her silently.

Then Madelon made a quick motion in the folds of her skirt, and there
was the long gleam of a hunting-knife above the man in the bed.
Margaret Bean, standing by the door, shrieked faintly, but she did
not stir.

"I have tried everything," said Madelon. "This is the last. Speak, or
I will make your speaking of no avail. I will strike again, and this
time they shall find me beside you and not Burr. My new guilt shall
prove my old, and they will hang me and not him. Speak, or, before
God, I will strike!"

Then Lot Gordon spoke. "I love you, Madelon," said he.

"Say what I bid you, Lot Gordon; not that."

"All your bidding is in that."

"Will you?"

"I will clear--Burr."

Madelon slipped her knife away, and stood back. Margaret Bean slunk
farther around past the bedpost. Neither of them could see her.

"On one condition," said Lot Gordon.

"What?"

"That you marry me."

Madelon gasped. "You?"

Lot laughed faintly, stretching his ghastly mouth. "You think it is
an offer of wedlock from a churchyard knight," he said.

"What are you talking about, Lot Gordon?"

"Marry me!"

"Marry you? I am going to prison to-day for stabbing you. If you die,
I die for your murder. Marriage between us? You are mad, Lot Gordon."

Lot Gordon opened his mouth to speak, but he coughed instead. He half
raised himself feebly, and his cough shook the bed. Madelon waited
until he lay back, gasping.

"You are mad to talk so," she said again, but her voice was softer.

"No madder--than--my ancestors made me," Lot stammered, feebly. Great
drops of sweat stood on his forehead.

Madelon stood looking at him. He lay still, breathing hard, for a
little; then he spoke again. "Say you will marry me, and I will clear
him," he said, "or else--strike as you will. But all will believe
that Burr struck the first blow and you the second for love of him,
and though he be not hung, the mark of the noose will be round his
neck in folks' fancies so long as he draws the breath of life."

"I will marry you," said Madelon.

"Don't cheat yourself," Lot went on, in his disjointed sentences,
broken with the rise of the cough in his throat. "This wound may not
be--mortal--after all, and a man lives--long, sometimes, when he's
sore put to it for breath. The spark of life dies hard, and you may
fan it into a blaze again. All the doctor's nostrums may not stir my
poor dying flesh--but