for it.

THE PLUNDERER

It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had
eyes for only one man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and thought,
at first, that hers was a passing fancy. He soon saw differently. There
was that look in her eyes which burns conviction as deep as the furnace
from which it comes: the hot, shy, hungering look of desire; most
childlike, painfully infinite. He would rather have faced the cold mouth
of a pistol; for he felt how it would end. He might be beyond wish to
play the lover, but he knew that every man can endure being loved. He
also knew that some are possessed--a dream, a spell, what you will--for
their life long. Kitty Cline was one of these.

He thought he must go away, but he did not. From the hour he decided to
stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post,
had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that
he could, as he said himself, "roast the cock o' the roost"--meaning
Pierre. He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden
increase of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming
the I O U, representing two years' salary, went down to the house where
Kitty Cline lived, and shot himself on the door-step.

He had had the misfortune to prefer Kitty to the other girls at Guidon
Hill--though Nellie Sanger would have been as much to him, if Kitty had
been easier to win. The two things together told hard against Pierre.
Before, he might have gone; in the face of difficulty he certainly would
not go. Willie Haslam's funeral was a public function: he was young,
innocent-looking, handsome, and the people did not know what Pierre
would not tell now--that he had cheated grossly at cards. Pierre was
sure, before Liddall, the surveyor, told him, that a movement was apace
to give him trouble--possibly fatal.

"You had better go," said Liddall. "There's no use tempting Providence."

"They are tempting the devil," was the cool reply; "and that is not all
joy, as you shall see."

He stayed. For a time there was no demonstration on either side. He
came and went through the streets, and was found at his usual haunts, to
observers as cool and nonchalant as ever. He was a changed man, however.
He never got away from the look in Kitty Cline's eyes. He felt the thing
wearing on him, and he hesitated to speculate on the result; but he
knew vaguely that it would end in disaster. There is a kind of