man don't want to hear them from the woman he loves. Yes,
loves!"

The man's dark eyes were burning, and as the girl rose from her seat
he reached out one brown hand to detain her. But his gesture was
needless. She made no move to go. She stood before him, her proud
young face now flushing, now pale with emotion, her wonderful eyes
veiled lest he should read in their depths feelings that she was
struggling to conceal. Her rounded bosom rose and fell with the
furious beatings of a heart she could not still.

"No, no," the man rushed on, "you got to hear me, if it makes you hate
me fer the rest of your life. I'm nothing but jest a plain feller
who's lived all his life in this back country. I've got no education,
nothin'Buck nodded with understanding. "That's wher' the other come
from."

They stood for some moments waiting for a further sign. But nothing
came. The night was pitch black. There was no break anywhere in the
sky. The lamplight in the house stared out sharp and clear, but the
house itself, as with the barns and other outbuildings, the stockade,
even the line of the tree tops where they met the sky, was quite lost
in the inky night.

"It'll come quick," said the Padre.

"Sure."

They moved on to the house, and in a few minutes were sitting down to
one of those silent meals which was so much a part of their habit. Yet
each man was alert. Each man was thinking of those things which they
knew to be threatening. Each man was ready for what might be
forthcoming. Be