tly they stood, staring deep into each other's eyes;--these two
products of a feud whose bitterness had long outlived the cause which
gave it birth. His face was not two feet away, and the pupils which
clung now eagerly to her own were charged with a force that held her
almost hypnotized. Through them she began to see another being, another
soul, a transfigured man. Their dilations seemed to be drawing aside and
again closing the curtains, letting her peep into the secrets behind his
mobile face. Her cheeks were burning more furiously than ever, drying up
the recent tears to faint, tell-tale stains; and her lips were parted,
showing teeth still set with anger. But her eyes--those eyes which were
seeing new things in him--they, by a dewy radiance she did not know was
there, contradicted much of the storm and passion.

CHAPTER XXX

"I'LL PAY THE DEBT!"

After several minutes the transfigured man before her spoke again:

"I'll pay the debt," he said, in a low tone of finality. "I'll wait here
till the sheriff comes. Up to now there hasn't been a force in all
Gawd's world that could 've come 'tween me an' the things you're
teachin'. I didn't care about Potter. He was in the way. I've got no
sorrows about anythin' since that day I drew sights on yoh Pappy's head,
an' now. Ruth said she an' I owed a debt to the State for what they'd
done for her, an' we couldn't be beholden to it; so I was goin' to pay
all that back by bein' the biggest man of my time, by goin' back in
those mountains, just as Lincoln would a-done, an' bringin' my people
out to light--by emancipatin' all of 'em from the ignorance that's been
makin' 'em slaves! But I reckon the first payment comes to you. You've a
right to it, an' I'll stay here till you get all the revenge you want!"

"Don't," she whispered huskily. "Don't talk to me! I don't know what
I've done!"

"You've done," he answered for her, "just what yoh Pappy's been callin'
on you to do;--just as I did once what my Granny called on me to do. I
reckon we're quits, now!"

"Oh, no, Dale!" she suddenly cried, looking up at the clock. "It isn't
right! Go, while you have a chance! Go! Go!" She even tried to push him
toward the door. "Go somewhere and begin your lessons again, and make
yourself big in spite of things! Go now, before they come after you!"

"I can't," he answered simply. "I wish I could. But that feller there,"
he pointed to a volume of Plutarch, "wrote that Cato said the s