ietorship.

Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his eyes turned to
the young man.

"Is this your house?" he inquired.

Harney laughed: "Well--as much as it's anybody's. I come here to sketch
occasionally."

"And to receive Miss Royall's visits?"

"When she does me the honour----"

"Is this the home you propose to bring her to when you get married?"

There was an immense and oppressive silence. Charity, quivering with
anger, started forward, and then stood silent, too humbled for speech.
Harney's eyes had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised them
presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall, said: "Miss Royall is not
a child. Isn't it rather absurd to talk of her as if she were? I believe
she considers herself free to come and go as she pleases, without any
questions from anyone." He paused and added: "I'm ready to answer any
she wishes to ask me."

Mr. Royall turned to her. "Ask him when he's going to marry you,
then----" There was another silence, and he laughed in his turn--a
broken laugh, with a scraping sound in it. "You darsn't!" he shouted out
with sudden passion. He went close up to Charity, his right arm lifted,
not in menace but in tragic exhortation.

"You darsn't, and you know it--and you know why!" He swung back again
upon the young man. "And you know why you ain't asked her to marry you,
and why you don't mean to. It's because you hadn't need to; nor any
other man either. I'm the only one that was fool enough not to know
that; and I guess nobody'll repeat my mistake--not in Eagle County,
anyhow. They all know what she is, and what she came from. They all know
her mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, that followed one of
those Mountain fellows up to his place and lived there with him like a
heathen. I saw her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring this
child down. I went to save her from the kind of life her mother was
leading--but I'd better have left her in the kennel she came from...."
He paused and stared darkly at the two young people, and out beyond
them, at the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat down
beside the table on which they had so often spread their rustic supper,
and covered his face with his hands. Harney leaned in the window, a
frown on his face: he was twirling between his fingers a small package
that dangled from a loop of string.... Charity heard Mr. Royall draw a
hard breath or two, and his shoulders shook a little.