d held up another to be warmed. He thought he had never seen a
face so full of sweet, suffering tenderness. His heart bounded
suddenly with a thought so full of joy that he could hardly breathe.
She had driven the outlaw from her heart and already loved him; she had
learned to love him since he had been there. He could see it, feel it
in her every tender word and act, and he--God knew he loved her--loved
her with his whole wearied soul. Then the thought of her appeal to old
John Wambush and the lies she had told that night to save her lover
struck him like a blow in the face, and he felt himself turning cold
all over in the embrace of utter despair. "No, no, no!" he said, in
his heart, "she's not for me! I could never forget that--never! I've
always felt that the woman I loved must never have loved before, and
Wambush--ugh!"

She raised her great eyes to his in the mellow firelight, and then, as
if puzzled by his expression, calmly studied his face.

"You are not going back to that room over the stable, are you?" she
questioned.

"Yes, to-morrow night."

"Don't do it--it is not comfortable; it is awfully roomy and bare and
cold."

"Oh, I am used to that. Many a time I've slept out in the open air on
a frosty night, with nothing round me but a blanket."

"You could occupy this room whenever it suited you; it is seldom used.
I heard mother say yesterday that she wished you would."

"I'd better stay there," he answered, moved again by her irresistible
solicitude, and that other thing in her tone to which he had laid claim
and hugged to his bruised heart. He felt an almost uncontrollable
desire to raise her in his arms, to unbosom his anguish to her, and
propose that they both fight their battles of forgetfulness side by
side, but he shrank from it. The thought of Wambush was again upon him
like some rasping soul-irritant.

"No, no; I'm going back to the stable," he said, fiercely. "I will not
stay here any longer--not a day longer!"

He saw her start, and then she put down the blanket and stood up. "I
do not understand you at all, sometimes" she faltered, "not at all."

"But I understand you, God knows," he returned, bitterly. "Harriet,
little, suffering, wronged woman, I know something about you. I know
what has been worrying you so much since I came here."

She started and an awful look crept into her face.

"Oh, Mr. Westerfelt, do you?"

"Yes, I know it--that's enough now; let's agree never