acred promise that so far
as you are concerned, it shall never come out at all!"

"This monstrous conspiracy? This cold blooded massacre?"

And I crouched aghast.

"Yes; it could do no good; and, at any rate, unless you promise I remain
where I am."

"In their hands?"

"Decidedly--to warn them in time. Leave them I would, but betray
them--never!"

What could I say? What choice had I in the face of an alternative so
headstrong and so unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these miscreants I
would have let every malefactor in the country go unscathed: yet the
condition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated, my love went on her knees
to me, there in the moonlight among the rhododendrons.

"Promise--promise--or you will kill me!" she gasped. "They may deserve
it richly, but I would rather be torn in little pieces than--than have
them--hanged!"

"It is too good for most of them."

"Promise!"

"To hold my tongue about them all?"

"Yes--promise!"

"Promise!"

"When a hundred lives were sacrificed--"

"Promise!"

"I can't," I said. "It's wrong."

"Then good-by!" she cried, starting to her feet.

"No--no--" and I caught her hand.

"Well, then?"

"I--promise."

CHAPTER XV. FIRST BLOOD

So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for Eva's sake, to save her from
these wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did it
strike me as very strange, after a moment's reflection, that she should
intercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own mother's widower,
prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him to be. The only
surprise was that she had not interceded in his name; that I should have
forgotten, and she should have allowed me to forget, the very existence
of so indisputable a claim upon her loyalty. This, however, made it a
little difficult to understand the hysterical gratitude with which my
unwilling promise was received. Poor darling! she was beside herself
with sheer relief. She wept as I had never seen her weep before. She
seized and even kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared what
she did, surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of it
passed unheeded. I was the best friend she had ever had. I was her one
good friend in all the world; she would trust herself to me; and if I
would but take her to the convent where she had been brought up, she
would pray for me there until her death, but that would not be very
long.

All of which confused me utterly; it