, the girl held out her hands, and he lifted her to her feet.
"You--you came--just in time, Mr. Marston."

An instant he stood there, then muttering something under his breath, he
turned, caught up his rifle, and started toward the door.

But, as he reached the threshold, she cried out, "Mr. Marston, don't,
don't leave me again."

The convict stopped, hesitated, then he said solemnly "Miss Andres, can
you pray? I know you can. You are a good girl. If God can hear a prayer he
will surely hear you. Come with me. Come--and pray girl--pray for me."

* * * * *

The most charitable construction that can be put upon the action of James
Rutlidge, just related, is to accept the explanation of his conduct that
he, himself made to Sibyl. The man was insane--as Mr. Taine was insane--as
Mrs. Taine was insane.

What else can be said of a class of people who, in an age wedded to
materialism, demand of their artists not that they shall set before them
ideals of truth and purity and beauty, but that they shall feed their
diseased minds with thoughts of lust and stimulate their abnormal passions
with lascivious imaginings? Can a class--whatever its pretense to culture
may be--can a class, that, in story and picture and music and play, counts
greatest in art those who most effectively arouse the basest passions of
which the human being is capable, be rightly judged sane?

James Rutlidge was bred, born, and reared in an atmosphere that does not
tolerate purity of thought. It was literally impossible for him to think
sanely of the holiest, most sacred, most fundamental facts of life.
Education, culture, art, literature,--all that is commonly supposed to
lift man above the level of the beasts,--are used by men and women of his
kind to so pervert their own natures that they are able to descend to
bestial depths that the dumb animals themselves are not capable of
reaching. In what he called his love for Sibyl Andres, James Rutlidge was
insane--but no more so than thousands of others. The methods of securing
the objects of their desires vary--the motive that prompts is the
same--the end sought is identical.

As he hurriedly climbed the mountainside, out of the deep gorge that hid
the cabin, the man's mind was in a whirl of emotions--rage at being
interrupted at the moment of his triumph; dread lest the approaching one
should be accompanied by others, and the girl be taken from him; fear that
the convict wo