ant you to keep out of his way. You must--oh,
Mr. Westerfelt, you must go! Don't stand here; they are coming down
the Hawkbill road directly. You could ride off towards Dartsmouth and
easily get away, if you will hurry."

"I see," he answered, with a steady stare of condemnation; "you want to
keep him from committing another crime--a more serious one."

She looked at him an instant as if puzzled, and then said:

"I want to keep him from killing you."

"Do you think he would take advantage of a helpless man?"

"I know it, Mr. Westerfelt; oh, I know he would!"

"Then you acknowledge he is a coward, and yet you--my God, what sort of
a creature _are_ you?"

She continued to stare at him wonderingly, as if half afraid. She
moved suddenly into a moonbeam that streamed through a broken shingle
in the roof. Her face was like white marble. In its terrified lines
and angles he read nothing but the imprint of past weakness where he
should have seen only pleading purity--the purity of a child cowed and
awed by the object of a love so powerful, so self-sacrificing that she
made no attempt to understand it. She had always felt her inferiority
to others, and now that she loved her ideal of superiority she seemed
to expect ill-treatment--even contempt--at his hands.

He looked away from her. The begrimed handle of the bellows creaked
and swung as he leaned on it. He turned suddenly and impulsively
grasped her hands.

"You are a good girl," he cried; "you have been the best friend I ever
had. If I don't treat you better, it is on account of my awful nature.
I can't control it when I think of that villain."

"He _has_ treated you very badly," she said, slowly, in a voice that
faltered.

"Where did you meet him and when?" he asked, under his breath. "God
knows I thought you were done with him."

"He came right to the house just after dark," returned Harriet.
"Mother let him come in; she wanted to talk to him."

"Did he come to get you to go away with him, Harriet?"

"Yes, Mr. Westerfelt."

"And why didn't you go?"

"Oh, how _can_ you ask such a question," she asked, "when you _know_--"
She broke off suddenly, and then, seeing that he was silent, she added:
"Mr. Westerfelt, sometimes I am afraid, really afraid, your sickness
has affected your mind, you speak so strange and harsh to me. Surely I
do not deserve such cruelty. I am just a woman, and a weak one at
that; a woman driven nearly crazy through troubl