call now and lifted her voice
clearly. "MacKelvey and Hume and two more men are there, right there.
They are going to arrest you for Arthur's murder. They mean to keep
you shut up in jail until they ruin you. They will make evidence to
hang you. You must go, go quick."

He swung about quickly, caught sight of the four men who had seen Wanda
and who were lessening the distance by quick strides. His face
blackened to a great anger. Then he turned back to her and his face
flushed with a great happiness. For in the man as in the woman love
was stronger than fear or hatred.

"You golden hearted, wonderful woman!" he cried softly. He reached out
his arms as she swept by and gathered her into them. He kissed her
softly. And then, swiftly, he turned away.

"After a few days, come to the cave," he said eagerly. "If I let them
take me now it would mean more than my ruin, more than my death, Wanda.
They won't take me. When a man is arrested for Arthur's murder it is
going to be the right man."

And striking out mightily, steadily he left her, driving his straight
way toward the broken country of the upper end of the valley.

When they came to where she lay, Hume first, they found Wanda Leland
very still and white, motionless save for the little sobs shaking her.
Hume's anger broke out into a wordy fury. He shook his fist at her
prostrate body and cursed. But he did not sneer. There was too deep a
wonder in his heart. He knew, they all knew, what it meant to have
done what she had done. And MacKelvey, a hard man robbed by her of his
prey, took off his hat and lifted her gently and said simply, and in
full reverence:

"By God!"

CHAPTER XXII

THE FUGITIVE

"You are no longer daughter of mine!" cried Martin Leland sternly in
the first heat of his anger. "You have turned against your own blood
like a traitress. You have forsaken your father to ally yourself with
a drunken brawler, a man so sunken in depravity that he has murdered
his own brother for mere money. You have shamed yourself and your
mother and me. You have bared your heart for the world to look at and
laugh at, that men may link your name and the name of a common fugitive
from justice. You would be held up to less shame had you merely
uncovered your body and gone out naked for men to jeer at!"

Wanda, lying white and lax upon the couch near the fireplace, suddenly
dropped her mother's hand and sprang to her feet, her body quiverin