ds, not a living soul cares whether I live or die. There is
no one whom I can trust, and no one who trusts me. I have to be ever on
the lookout, and suspicious. Every man is my enemy, and all I have is
my life, worthless as it is. But pride will not let me lose it without
making a fight.

"I hope the time will come when you can see me shoot, Miss Shields, that
the time will come when I can turn my back to my fellow men without
fearing a shot. Only once have I done that--it was with your brother, and
I enjoyed it immensely. And no one will welcome that day more devoutly
than the outlawed Orphan--the many times murderer--but by necessity:
for I never killed a man unless he was trying to kill me, and I never
will. I know what is _said_, but what I say is the truth. I can only ask
you to believe me, although I realize that I am asking much."

He arose and walked over to his sombrero, taking it up and turning toward
the door.

"To-night is the first time in ten years that I have been in a stranger's
house unarmed, and at ease. You have made the evening so pleasant for
me, so delightfully strange, and you all have been so good to talk to me
and treat me white that I find it impossible to thank you as I wish I
could. Words are hopelessly inadequate, and more or less empty, but you
will not lose by it," he said as he opened the door. "Good night, ladies."

The door closed softly, quickly, and the women heard the cantering
hoofbeats of his horse as they grew fainter and finally died out on the
plain.

His departure was seemingly unnoticed. They sat in silence for a minute
or more, each lost in her own thoughts, each deeply affected by his
words, staring before them and picturing each as her temperament
guided, the hunted man's dangers and loneliness. Mrs. Shields sat as he
had left her, her chin resting in her hand, seeing only two men in a
chaparral, one of whom was the man she loved. She could hear the
shooting and the war cries, she could see them meet, and clasp hands at
the parting; and her heart filled with kindly pity for the outcast, a
pity the others could not know. Helen, her face full in the light, her
arms outstretched on the table before her and her eyes moist, wondered at
the savage unkindness of men, the almost unbelievable harshness of
man for man. Her head dropped to her arms, and her sister Mary, also
under the spell, wondered at the expression she had seen on Helen's
face. Miss Ritchie, who had scarcely g