ook here, Ned,"
he added more seriously, "the only swindling was our bringing that note
here. That was YOUR idea. You thought it would remove suspicion, and as
you believed I was bleeding to death you played that game for all it was
worth to save me. You might have done what I asked you to do--propped
me up in the bushes, and got away yourself. I was good for a couple of
shots yet, and after that--what mattered? That night, the next day, the
next time I take the road, or a year hence? It will come when it will
come, all the same!"

He did not speak bitterly, nor relax his smile. Falkner, without
speaking, slid his hand along the coverlet. Lee grasped it, and their
hands remained clasped together for a few minutes in silence.

"How is this to end? We cannot go on here in this way," said Falkner
suddenly.

"If we cannot get away it must go on. Look here, Ned. I don't reckon
to take anything out of this house that I didn't bring in it, or isn't
freely offered to me; yet I don't otherwise, you understand, intend
making myself out a d--d bit better than I am. That's the only excuse I
have for not making myself out JUST WHAT I am. I don't know the fellow
who's obliged to tell every one the last company he was in, or the last
thing he did! Do you suppose even these pretty little women tell US
their whole story? Do you fancy that this St. John in the wilderness is
canonized in his family? Perhaps, when I take the liberty to intrude in
his affairs, as he has in mine, he'd see he isn't. I don't blame you for
being sensitive, Ned. It's natural. When a man lives outside the revised
statutes of his own State he is apt to be awfully fine on points of
etiquette in his own household. As for me, I find it rather comfortable
here. The beds of other people's making strike me as being more
satisfactory than my own. Good-night."

In a few moments he was sleeping the peaceful sleep of that youth which
seemed to be his own dominant quality. Falkner stood for a little space
and watched him, following the boyish lines of his cheek on the pillow,
from the shadow of the light brown lashes under his closed lids to the
lifting of his short upper lip over his white teeth, with his regular
respiration. Only a sharp accenting of the line of nostril and jaw and a
faint depression of the temple betrayed his already tried manhood.

The house had long sunk to repose when Falkner returned to the window,
and remained looking out upon the storm. Suddenl