er to assume.
She wants to withdraw the request today--she asks you to give it up and
let Ascalon go on its wicked way."

"Tell her," said he gently, holding her pleading, pained eyes a moment
with his assuring gaze, "that a man can't drop a piece of work like this
and turn his back on it and walk away. They'd say in Ascalon that he was
a coward, and they'd be telling the truth."

"Oh! I oughtn't have argued you into it!" she regretted, bitter in her
self-blame. "But the thought of that terrible, cruel man, of all he's
killed, all he will kill if he comes back--made a selfish coward of me.
We had gone through a week of terror--you can't understand a woman's
terror of that kind of men, storming the streets at night uncurbed!"

"A man can only guess."

"I was so grateful to you for driving them away from here, for purifying
the air after them like a rain, that I urged you to go ahead and finish
the job, just as if we were conferring a great favor! I didn't think at
the time, but I've thought it all over since."

"You mustn't worry about it any more. It is a great favor, a great
honor, to be asked to serve you at all."

"You're too generous, Mr. Morgan. There are only a few of us here who
care about order and peace--you can see that for yourself this
morning--no matter what assurance they gave you yesterday. Let it go. If
you don't want to get your horse and ride away, you can at least resign.
You've got justification enough for that, you've seen the men that
promised to support you yesterday turn their backs on you when you came
up the street today. They don't want the town shut up, they don't want
it changed--not when it hits their pocketbooks. You can tell pa that,
and resign--or I'll tell him--it was my fault, I got you into it."

"You couldn't expect me to do that--you don't expect it," he chided, his
voice grave and low.

"I can want you to do it--I don't expect it."

"Of course not. We'll not talk about it any more."

They continued toward her father's office in silence, crossing the
stretch of barren in which the little catalpa tree stood. Rhetta looked
up into his face.

"You've never killed a man, Mr. Morgan," she said, more as a positive
statement than as a question.

"No, I never have, Miss Thayer," Morgan answered her, as ingenuously
sincere as she had asked it.

"I think I know it by the touch of a man's hand," she said, her face
growing pale from her deep revulsion. "I shudder at the touch of