dissimulation was more dangerous, she knew, than his
brutality, and he left her the prey to more than one alarm and the
renewed resolve never to be taken off her guard. That night he came
back. He told her uncle, glancing admiringly at Nan as he recounted
the story, how she had stood her ground against him in the morning.

Nor did Nan like the way her uncle acted while he listened--and
afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was
treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything
to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get
all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she
protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that
she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get
killed to stop it, and that if she had any sense she would get ready
to marry her cousin peaceably, adding, that if she didn't have sense,
he would see himself it was provided for her.

His threats left Nan aghast. For two days she thought them all over.
Then she dressed to go to town. On her way to the barn her uncle
intercepted her. "Where you going?"

"To Sleepy Cat," returned Nan, regarding him collectedly.

"No, you're not," he announced bluntly.

Nan looked at him in silence. "I don't want you running to town any
more to meet de Spain," added Duke, without any attempt to soften his
injunction.

"But I've got to go to town once in a while, whether I meet Henry de
Spain or not, Uncle Duke."

"What do you have to go for?"

"Why, for mail, supplies--everything."

"Pardaloe can attend to all that."

Nan shook her head. "Whether he can or not, I'm not going to be cut
off from going to Sleepy Cat, Uncle Duke--nor from seeing Henry de
Spain."

"Meaning to say you won't obey, eh?"

"When I'm going to marry a man it isn't right to forbid me seeing
him."

"You're not going to marry him; you're going to marry Gale, and the
quicker you make up your mind to it the better."

"You might better tell me I am going to marry Bull Page--I would marry
him first. I will never marry Gale Morgan in the living world, and
I've told you so more than once."

He regarded his niece a moment wrathfully and, without replying,
walked back to the house. Nan, upset but resolute, went on to the barn
and asked Pardaloe to saddle her pony. Pardaloe shuffled around in an
obliging way, but at the end of some evasion admitted he had orders
not to do it.