seemed almost logical the moment before. Win Lou Macon by the
power of fear, well enough, for was not fear the thing which she had
followed all her life? Was it not through fear that the colonel himself
had reduced her to such abject, unquestioning obedience?

He went thoughtfully to his own cabin, and, down-headed in his musings,
he became aware with a start of Lou Macon in the hut. She had changed
the room as her father had bidden her to do. Just wherein the difference
lay, Donnegan could not tell. There was a touch of evergreen in one
corner; she had laid a strip of bright cloth over the rickety little
table, and in ten minutes she had given the hut a semblance of permanent
livableness. Donnegan saw her now, with some vestige of the smile of her
art upon her face; but she immediately smoothed it to perfect gravity.
He had never seen such perfect self-command in a woman.

"Is there anything more that I can do?" she asked, moving toward the
door.

"Nothing."

"Good night."

"Wait."

She still seemed to be under the authority which the colonel had
delegated to Donnegan when they started for The Corner. She turned, and
without a word came back to him. And a pang struck through Donnegan.
What would he not have given if she had come at his call not with these
dumb eyes, but with a spark of kindliness? Instead, she obeyed him as a
soldier obeys a commander.

"There has been trouble," said Donnegan.

"Yes?" she said, but there was no change in her face.

"It was forced upon me." Then he added: "It amounted to a shooting
affair."

There was a change in her face now, indeed. A glint came in her eyes,
and the suggestion of the colonel which he had once or twice before
sensed in her, now became more vivid than ever before. The same
contemptuous heartlessness, which was the colonel's most habitual
expression, now looked at Donnegan out of the lovely face of the girl.

"They were fools to press you to the wall," she said. "I have no pity
for them."

For a moment Donnegan only stared at her; on what did she base her
confidence in his prowess as a fighting man?

"It was only one man," he said huskily.

Ah, there he had struck her home! As though the words were a burden, she
shrank from him; then she slipped suddenly close to him and caught both
his hands. Her head was raised far back; she had pressed close to him;
she seemed in every line of her body to plead with him against himself,
and all the veils which had c