That's what she
said," Jack cried, in his agony.

"Your wife--she said that?" faltered Dick.

Fiercely in his torture Jack answered: "Yes--my wife--my wife said it.
'Bring him back to me.'"

"Back?" Dick paused. "Back to what?" he asked himself. "She's your
wife, isn't she?" he demanded.

"That's what the law says," answered Jack.

With the thought of the evening in the garden when he heard Jack and
Echo pronounced man and wife surging over him, Dick murmured: "What God
hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

"That's what the Book says," answered Jack. "But when hands alone are
joined and hearts are asunder, it can't go on record as the work of
God."

Dick bowed his head in his hands. "I don't understand."

Stubbornly Jack pursued his message to Dick. "She doesn't love me. I
thought I had won her, but she married me with your image in her heart.
She married me, yet all the while you were the man she
loved--you--you--and in the end I found it out."

Jack's voice sank almost into a whisper as he finished his revelation
to Dick, who raised his head and cried: "And yet she broke her faith
with me--"

Jack arose in his misery. His task was harder than he expected. Dick
was forcing him to tell all without concealing even the smallest trifle
of his shame.

"She thought--you were dead. I never told her otherwise. I lied to
her--I lied to her."

"She never knew?" asked Dick joyfully. "The letter--?"

"I never gave it to her," answered Jack simply.

Dick leaped to his feet, pulling his revolver from his holster. "And I
thought her false to her trust!" He aimed his gun at Payson's heart.
"I ought to kill you for this!"

Jack spread out his arms and calmly replied: "I'm ready."

Dick dropped his gun and slipped it into the holster with a gesture of
despair. "But it's too late now, too late!"

In his eagerness to tell Dick the way he had solved the problem, Jack
spoke nervously and quickly. "No, it isn't too late. There's one way
out of this--one way in which I can atone for the wrong I've done you
both, and I stand ready to make that atonement. It is your right to
kill me, but it is better that you go back to her without my blood on
your hands--"

"Go--back--to her?" questioned Dick, as the meaning of the phrase
slowly dawned upon him.

"Yes," said Jack, holding out his hands. "Go back with clean hands to
Echo Allen. It is you she loves. There's my horse up yonder. Beyond,
the