tly he slid a revolver from its holster, and presented it to her, butt
first. "You can have your wish right easy, if you mean it. Go to it.
There's no danger. All you've got to give out is that I frightened you.
You'll be a heroine, too."

She looked at the weapon and at him, and the very thought of it made her
sick. She saw the thing almost as if it were already done--the smoking
revolver in her hand, and the man lying motionless before her.

"Take it away," she said, with a shudder.

"You see, you can't do it! You can't even go to the window there and shout
out that Black MacQueen is with you in the house. You don't hate me at
all, my dear."

"Because I won't kill you with my own hand? You reason logically."

"Then why don't you betray my presence? Why don't you call your friends in
to take me?"

"I'm not sure that I won't; but if I don't, it will be for their sakes,
and not for yours. They could not take you without loss of life."

"You're right there," he agreed, with a flash of his tigerish ferocity.
"They couldn't take me alive at all, and I reckon before I checked in a
few of them would."

CHAPTER XIV

BLACK MACQUEEN CASHES HIS CHECKS

It was part of his supreme audacity to trust her. While he was changing
his dusty, travel-stained clothes for some that belonged to her brother
she prepared a meal for him downstairs. A dozen times the impulse was on
her to fly into the street and call out that Black MacQueen was in the
house, but always she restrained herself. He was going to leave the
country within a few hours. Better let him go without bloodshed.

He came down to his dinner fresh from a bath and a shave, wearing a new
tweed suit, which fitted him a trifle loosely, but was not unbecoming to
his trim, lithe figure. No commercial traveler at a familiar hotel could
have been more jauntily and blithely at home.

"So you didn't run away!" He grinned.

"Not yet. I'm going to later. I owe you a meal, and I wanted to pay it
first."

It was his very contempt of fear that had held her. To fool away half an
hour in dressing, knowing that it was very likely she might be summoning
men to kill him--to come down confident and unperturbed, possibly to meet
his death--was such a piece of dare-deviltry as won reluctant admiration,
in spite of her detestation of him. Even if she did not give him up, his
situation was precarious in the extreme. All the trains were being
watched; and in spite of this he had