exclaimed in concern at this, the mother going to her boy to
feel him over as for wounds, standing by him a little while with arm
around him.

"Did you shoot back?" Stilwell wanted to know.

"I hope I did," Fred replied.

Stilwell got up, and stood looking at the moon a little while as if
calculating the time of night.

"They need a man or two over there to clean that gang up," he said.
"Well, it ain't my business to do it, as long as they didn't hit you."

Mrs. Stilwell chided him sharply, perhaps having history behind her to
justify her alarm at these symptoms.

"Let them fight it out among themselves, the wolves!" she said.

Morgan had drawn a little apart from the family group, walking to the
corner of the house where he stood looking off toward Ascalon, still and
tense as if he listened for the sounds of conflict. He was dressed in
Stilwell's clothes, which were somewhat too roomy of body but nothing
too large otherwise, for both of them had the stature of proper men.
His feet were in slippers, his ankles bandaged and soaked with the
penetrating liniment designed alike for the ailments of man and beast.

Violet studied him as he stood there between her and the moon, his face
sterner for the ordeal of suffering that had tried his manhood in that
two-mile run beside the train, where nothing but a sublime defiance of
death had held him to his feet.

He had told her of his seven-years' struggle upward from the cowboy's
saddle to a place of honor in the faculty of the institution where he
had beaten out the hard, slow path to learning; she knew of his purpose
in coming to the western Kansas plains. Until this moment she had
believed it to be a misleading and destructive illusion that would break
his heart and rive his soul, as it had the hearts and souls of thousands
of brave men and women before him.

Now she had a new revelation, the moonlight on his face, bright in his
fair hair, picturing him as rugged as a rock uplifted against the dim
sky. She knew him then for a man such as she never had met in the narrow
circle of her life before, a man strong to live in his purpose and
strong to die in it if the need might be. He would conquer where others
had failed; the strength of his soul was written in his earnest face.

"I think I'll go over to Ascalon," Morgan said presently, turning to
them, speaking slowly. "Will you let me have a horse?"

"Go to Ascalon! Lands save us!" Mrs. Stilwell exclaimed.

"No, n