This time Joan's nerves gave way and the room, with its smell of
scorched flesh, of powder, and of frost, went out from her horrified
senses. For a moment the stranger's stern face and brilliant eyes made
the approaching center of a great cloud of darkness, then it too went
out.

CHAPTER VII

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

The man who had entered with such violence upon so violent a scene,
stood waiting till the smoke of Pierre's discharge had cleared away,
then, still holding his gun in readiness, he stepped across the room
and bent over the fallen man.

"I've killed him!" he said, just above his breath, and added
presently, "That was the judgment of God." He looked about, taking in
every detail of the scene, the branding iron that had burnt its mark
deep into the boards where Pierre had thrown it down, the glowing fire
heaped high and blazing dangerously in the small room, the woman bound
and burnt, the white night outside the uncurtained window.

Afterwards he went over to the woman, who drooped in her bonds with
head hanging backward over the wounded shoulder. He untied the silk
scarf and the rope and carried her, still unconscious, into the
bedroom where he laid her on the bed and bathed her face in water.
Joan's crown of hair had fallen about her neck and temples. Her bared
throat and shoulder had the firm smoothness of marble, her lifeless
face, its pure, full lips fallen apart, its long lids closed,
black-fringed and black-browed, owing little of its beauty to color or
expression, was at no loss in this deathlike composure and whiteness.
The man dealt gently with her as though she had been a child. He found
clean rags which he soaked in oil and placed over her burn, then he
drew the coarse clothing about her and resumed his bathing of her
forehead.

She gave a moaning sigh, her face contracted woefully, and she opened
her eyes. The man looked into them as a curious child might look into
an opened door.

"Did you see what happened?" he asked her when she had come fully to
herself.

"Yes," Joan whispered, her lips shaking.

"I've killed the brute."

Her face became a classic mask of tragedy, the drawn brows, horrified
eyes, and widened mouth.

"Pierre? Killed?" Her voice, hardly more than a whisper, filled the
house with its agony.

"Are you sorry?" demanded her rescuer sternly. "Was he in the habit of
tying you up or was this--branding--a special diversion?"

Joan turned her face away, writhed