taken up by a hundred voices. Indignant
citizens shouted: "We'll stand by you, Major. We'll see justice done."

Curtis, as he reached the stair-way, turned and coldly said: "Make your
words good. For four days a mob of two hundred armed men have menaced
the lives of my employes and my wards, and you did nothing to prevent
them. I am glad to see you appreciate the horror and the disgrace of
this night's doings. If you mean what you say, let no guilty man escape.
Make this night the memorable end of lawlessness in your country."

"We will!" roared a big, broad-faced, black-bearded man, and the crowd
broke into another roar of approval.

Elsie was waiting at the top of the stairs, tense and white. Her eyes
burned down into his with a singular flame as she cried out:

"Why didn't you come to me sooner? Why do you walk so slowly? Are you
hurt? Tell me the truth!"

"No, only tired," he answered, as he reached her side.

She put out her hand and touched his breast. "You are; you are all
bloody. Take off your coat; let me see!"

"No, it's not mine; it is poor Calvin's; he was badly wounded; he leaned
against me."

"But I saw you standing in the pistol-fire; take it off, I say!" Her
voice was almost frenziedly insistent.

He removed his coat in a daze of astonishment, and she cried out,
triumphantly: "See! I was right; your shirt is soaked. You are wounded!"

"True enough!" he replied, looking down in surprise at a big stain on
his shoulder. "I've been 'singed,' as Calvin calls it. It can't be
serious, for I have not felt it."

A sudden faintness seized upon Elsie as she gazed fixedly upon the
tell-tale stain. A gray whiteness passed over her face. "Oh, God!
suppose you had been killed!" she whispered.

In that shuddering whisper was the expression of the girl's complete and
final surrender, and Curtis did not question, did not speak; he took her
in his arms to comfort her.

"My sweetheart, you _do_ love me! I doubt no more. My poverty, your
wealth, what do they matter?"

She suddenly started away. "Oh, your wound! Where is the doctor? Go to
him!"

"The touch of your lips has healed me," he protested, but she insisted.

"Go! You are bleeding!" she commanded; and so, reluctantly, lingeringly,
with most unmilitary sloth, he turned away, made numb to any physical
pain by the tenderness in her voice.

As the young surgeon was dressing the gash, he said: "Well, Captain,
things happen in the West."

"Yes, the ki