irresolution impossible.

"Indeed, sir, I am not alone. I have in the chaise with me a sick man,
and I fear that he may be dying. I thought to find friends, but it seems
in the darkness I have missed my way. I must beg of you to assist me to
lift him into the house and give us shelter for the night."

The men had remained perfectly still, drinking in her every syllable
with that fierce thirst for news which is a first passion of dwellers in
such desolate places; then, aroused by what they heard, they came
forward across a rough bit of ground to the road. The burly form of John
Biery came first, and he called for a lantern, which was instantly
produced by one of those who followed. They held it up over Angel's
crouching form and death-like face. Then they held it higher and stared
at Susannah. Her shawl had fallen from off her shoulders. The
handkerchief upon her neck was loose, and underneath the pink border of
her bonnet the ringlets had begun to stray. Her resolute face, so young
and beautiful, startled them almost as an apparition might have done.

"I'm dead beat," said the hotel-keeper under his breath, "if I ever seed
anything like that!" But with the ready suspicion of a prudent
householder he questioned her. Where had the man come by the wound? For
they saw the blood-stained bandages she clasped.

Yesterday, she explained, he had received a slight bullet-wound by
accident, and to-day, in their long travel, the loss of blood had
disabled him.

"Does he belong to you, young lady?"

Susannah busied herself with the bandages for a moment, but terror had
carried her far. She replied with gentle decision, "He is my husband."

CHAPTER IX.

"It is our fault."

That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father's sitting-room, near the
door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms. His shoulders were
drooping. His face was gray and haggard. Even his hair and beard, damp,
unkempt, seemed to express remorse in their outline. He stood doggedly
facing his father and mother, repeating the thing that he saw to be
true, but with no further words to interpret his insight.

To his parents his opinions, his attitude, appeared as an outrage upon
reason. His father looked at him with greater severity than he had ever
before exercised upon his only child. "I reckon, Ephraim, that you speak
without using the sense that the Almighty has been mercifully pleased to
give you. You know, Ephraim, the girl has been as a d