n a less charitable light than it was when
he spoke of it to Ailleen. Then he said she turned away because she had
learned she had wronged him; now in his thoughts he galled himself by
attributing her action to fear and shame, and aggravated his sense of
injury by recalling, again and again, that the man who had married her
had kept for years the message she had sent on her deathbed.
Disjointedly and incoherently, but always bitterly, he brooded and piled
item on item, until there came to him the memory of the other, the
memory of the woman who had first set his life awry.

A few kind sentences; a touch of human sympathy; a token of kindly
impulse and generous open-heartedness at that moment when his better
nature was stirred, and Slaughter might have forgotten in the warmth of
the present the chill gloom of the past. But there was no one near him
to give the necessary trend to the direction of his thoughts and
emotions; nothing came to him save the recollection of the one whose
jealous fancy had let loose all the hard cruelty of his nature; and
Slaughter finished his walk with his mind seething in revengeful malice
against the memory of the woman who had wrought his ruin.

He turned his horse into the paddock, force of habit impelling him to
remove the saddle and bridle, the storm of his memory preventing him
from even realizing that he did so. With the bridle on his arm, and the
saddle under it, he walked to the hut and kicked the door open. On the
threshold he stopped. Two men sat at the rough table in the middle of
the room, and, as the door opened, the man with his back to the doorway
turned in his seat and rose to his feet.

The saddle fell from Slaughter's arm, unnoticed; the presence of the
second man was unrealized; for only could Slaughter stand and stare at
the man who faced him--a man with a brutal head and black, heavy brows.

"You don't seem too pleased to see an old mate," he said, with something
of a snarl in his voice.

"You!" Slaughter exclaimed.

"Yes, me; and why not?" replied the other, quickly and hotly.

"There's nothing between you and me--nothing," Slaughter said slowly.

"Is that so?" the man replied. "Well, I fancy I'm wrong, then, for I
thought that the work Kate Blair had done was enough to make both of us
learn----"

Slaughter started at the name, started forward, and then checked
himself, though his face went hard and his hands clenched, and his eyes
gleamed brighter than they di