r's forcing and
she knew that he would make no concession. When Williams spoke his voice
came chokingly.

"Conscience, leave us alone. What I have to say to this man is a matter
between the two of us."

But instead of obeying the girl took her place at Stuart's side and laid
her hand on his arm.

"What you have to say to him, Father, is very much my affair," she
replied steadily. "My action for the rest of my life depends upon it."

"Dear," suggested the Virginian in a lowered voice, "you can trust me.
I'm not going to lose my temper if it's humanly possible to keep it.
There's no reason why you should have to listen to things which it will
be hard to forget."

"No," she declared with a decisiveness that could not be shaken, "I stay
here as long as you stay. When you go, I go, too."

Farquaharson turned to the minister, "I believe you called for me, sir,"
he repeated, in a tone of even politeness. "You have something to say to
me?"

The old man raised a hand that was palsied with rage and his voice
shook.

"I fancy you heard what I said of you. I said that you had abused my
hospitality and that you are a coward and a sneak. You are worse than
that; you are an infamous scoundrel."

Conscience felt the muscles in the forearm upon which her fingers rested
grow tense and hard as cables. She saw the face pale to lividness and
the lips stiffen, but except for that, the man made no movement, and for
some ten seconds he did not speak. They were ten seconds of struggle
against an anger as fierce as it was just, but at the end of that time
he inquired quietly, "Is that all you meant to say to me?"

"No! There's much more, but for most men that would be enough. To let it
go unanswered is a confession of its truth."

"My invariable answer to such words," said Stuart Farquaharson slowly,
"is made with a clenched fist. The triple immunity of your cloth, your
age and your infirmity denies me even that reply."

"And what immunity makes a denial unnecessary?"

"A denial would dignify a charge which I can afford to ignore as I
ignore vulgar talk that I hear in an alley."

The old man bent forward, glaring like a gargoyle, and his first
attempts to speak were choked into inarticulate rumblings by his rage.
His face reddened with a fever of passion which threw the veins on his
temples into purple traceries.

"I repeat with a full responsibility--with the knowledge that the God
whom I have tried to serve is listening, th