else. There's
something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only think what it
means! Only think of having to remember such a thing! Why, it's what
they hang people for! It's murder!"

He dropped her hands. "Don't call it that name," he said sternly.

"When there was the choice!" she exclaimed, half to herself, like a
person stunned and speaking to the air. "To get ready for it when you
have the choice!"

"He did the choosing," answered the Virginian. "Listen to me. Are you
listening?" he asked, for her gaze was dull.

She nodded.

"I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It's my life. If folks came to think I was
a coward--"

"Who would think you were a coward?"

"Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies would
walk around saying they had always said so. I could not hold up my head
again among enemies or friends."

"When it was explained--"

"There'd be nothing to explain. There'd just be the fact." He was nearly
angry.

"There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion," said the New
England girl.

Her Southern lover looked at her. "Cert'nly there is. That's what I'm
showing in going against yours."

"But if you know that you are brave, and if I know that you are brave,
oh, my dear, my dear! what difference does the world make? How much
higher courage to go your own course--"

"I am goin' my own course," he broke in. "Can't yu' see how it must be
about a man? It's not for their benefit, friends or enemies, that I have
got this thing to do. If any man happened to say I was a thief and I
heard about it, would I let him go on spreadin' such a thing of me?
Don't I owe my own honesty something better than that? Would I sit down
in a corner rubbin' my honesty and whisperin' to it, 'There! there! I
know you ain't a thief?' No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about
my nature is not just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I
let 'em keep on sayin' it is a proof I don't value my nature enough to
shield it from their slander and give them their punishment. And that's
being a poor sort of a jay."

She had grown very white.

"Can't yu' see how it must be about a man?" he repeated.

"I cannot," she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her own. "If I
ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When I heard about that
last fall,--about the killing of those cattle thieves,--I kept saying to
myself: 'He had to do it. It was a public duty.' And lying sleepless I
got use