men were in the lane and coming
fast:

"Nothing is worthless that calls a man to do his duty like a man! An'
I'd be worse'n a coward to turn back from a duty to the very person
who's taught me what duty is!"

"But think--think," she urged, "of the good there is in you to help that
great mankind whose voice you say you've heard! All of that good will
be--choked out," she shuddered, "or rot in those gray walls you dread!"

He looked toward the gate, through which the sheriff now might dash at
any moment. She saw in his face the terrible dread of that alternative
and, to help him win the way she wished, grasped his arm. But slowly his
eyes turned back, moving affectionately across the rows of books lining
the walls, and, as though echoing impressions gathered from their great
storehouse, he whispered:

"What good there is in a man is there to stay. God, Himself, couldn't
take it out. It's only wickedness that twists it in a different shape,
and makes people think it never was! Do you reckon your good'll go when
you die?"

"But its opportunities to extend--they will be stopped!" she cried.
"Yours will be stopped!" The horses were in the circle now, and she
implored even more frantically: "Run for it--run!"

"No! The biggest men in those covers," he pointed again to the shelves,
"wouldn't be there today if they'd run! Jesus would be a by-word, and
the world couldn't raise its head to a single hero." The horses had
stopped, and a man was dismounting. "Good-bye," the big mountaineer said
quietly.

He put out his hand, but she did not see it. She had slipped into a
chair and was burying her sobbing face in her arms. Steps sounded on the
porch, and a bell far back in the house jingled. He looked at her
another long, breathless moment, then turned and walked out through the
French window.

"Good mawnin', sheriff," her tortured brain heard him say.

Old Jess Mason eyed him over high cheek bones and hawk-like nose for the
fraction of a second before taking his hand from beneath his coat. Then
it came slowly out, empty.

"Good mawnin', yohse'f!" The sheriff was fairly bristling with anger.
"Look-ee-heah," he savagely demanded, "what's this funny business about,
anyhow? Do you-all reckon you're goin' to poke fun at me an' the law,
an' git away with it? Or what?"

"I don't reckon there's been such an awful lot of fun poked around heah,
Jess," Dale sullenly answered.

"You don't! Well, there'd better not be, that's all