if by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into exquisite
torture.

"It's a lie! Lassiter! No, no!" she moaned. "I swear--you're wrong!"

"Stop! You'd perjure yourself! But I'll spare you that. You poor woman!
Still blind! Still faithful!... Listen. I know. Let that settle it. An' I
give up my purpose!"

"What is it--you say?"

"I give up my purpose. I've come to see an' feel differently. I can't
help poor Milly. An' I've outgrowed revenge. I've come to see I can be
no judge for men. I can't kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain't the same
with me since I loved you and little Fay."

"Lassiter! You mean you won't kill him?" Jane whispered.

"No."

"For my sake?"

"I reckon. I can't understand, but I'll respect your feelin's."

"Because you--oh, because you love me?... Eighteen years! You were that
terrible Lassiter! And now--because you love me?"

"That's it, Jane."

"Oh, you'll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart must
be stone. But--oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I'm not what I
was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it's easy to hate. Wait! My faith
in God--some God--still lives. By it I see happier times for you, poor
passion-swayed wanderer! For me--a miserable, broken woman. I loved your
sister Milly. I will love you. I can't have fallen so low--I can't be
so abandoned by God--that I've no love left to give you. Wait! Let us
forget Milly's sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth! There's
one thing I shall tell you--if you are at my death-bed, but I can't
speak now."

"I reckon I don't want to hear no more," said Lassiter.

Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way
out, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent
sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising,
sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on
Lassiter's part alarmed her.

"I heard hosses--hosses with muffled hoofs!" he said; and he got up
guardedly.

"Where's Fay?" asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll. The
bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not
in sight.

"Fay!" called Jane.

No answering shout of glee. No patter of flying feet. Jane saw Lassiter
stiffen.

"Fay--oh--Fay!" Jane almost screamed.

The leaves quivered and rustled; a lonesome cricket chirped in the
grass, a bee hummed by. The silence of the waning afternoon breathed
hateful portent. I