ughts in spite of the
horror of himself that possessed him, and he was enabled to speak more
coherently.

"If I had not been crazed when I looked through the window and saw you
crying, Betty, I would never have let you see me or touch me again.
It's only adding one crime to another to come near you. I meant just
to look in and see if I could catch one glimpse of you, and then was
going to lose myself to all the world, or else give myself up to be
hung." Then he was silent, and she began to question him.

"Don't! Richard. Hung? What have you done? What do you mean? When was
it?"

"Sunday night."

"But you had to start for Cheyenne early this morning. Where have you
been all day? I thought you were gone forever, dear."

"I hid myself down by the river. I lay there all day, and heard them
talking, but I couldn't see them nor they me. It was a hiding place we
knew of when our camp was there--Peter Junior and I. He's gone. I did
it--I did it with murder in my heart--Oh, my God!"

"Don't, Richard. You must tell me nothing except as I ask you. It is
not as if we did not love each other. What you have done I must help
you bear--as--as wives help their husbands--for I will never marry;
but all my life my heart will be married to yours." He reached for her
hands and covered them with kisses and moaned. "No, Richard, don't.
Eat the bread and meat I have brought you. You've eaten nothing for
two days, and everything may seem worse to you than it is."

"No, no!"

"Richard, I'll go away from you and leave you here alone if you don't
eat."

"Yes, I must eat--not only now--but all the rest of my life, I must
eat to live and repent. He was my dearest friend. I taunted him and
said bitter things. I goaded him. I was insane with rage and at last
so was he. He struck me--and--and I--I was trying to push him over the
bluff--"

Slowly it dawned on Betty what Richard's talk really meant.

"Not Peter? Oh, Richard--not Peter!" She shrank from him, wide-eyed in
terror.

"He would have killed me--for I know what was in his heart as well as
I knew what was in my own--and we were both seeing red. I've felt it
sometimes in battle, and the feeling makes a man drunken. A man will
do anything then. We'd been always friends--and yet we were drunken
with hate; and now--he--he is better off than I. I must live. Unless
for the disgrace to my relatives, I would give myself up to be
hanged. It would be better to take the punishment than to l