equal to her
own, she felt ready to cry. But the more terrible sound of laughter
approaching the house from the garden recalled her. Her friends were
coming.

"For Heaven's sake," she broke out desperately, "didn't you get my note
at the station telling you not to come?"

His face grew darker, and then took up its look of hopeless resignation,
as if this last misfortune was only an accepted part of his greater
trouble, as he sat down again, and to Miss Sally's horror, listlessly
swung his hat to and fro under his chair.

"No," he said, gloomily, "I didn't go to no station. I walked here all
the way from Shelbyville. I thought it might seem more like the square
thing to her for me to do. I sent HIM by express ahead in the box. It's
been at the stage office all day."

With a sickening conviction that she had been sitting on her cousin's
body while she wrote that ill-fated card, the young girl managed to gasp
out impatiently: "But you must go--yes--go now, at once! Don't talk now,
but go."

"I didn't come here," he said, rising with a kind of slow dignity, "to
interfere with things I didn't kalkilate to see," glancing again at her
dress, as the voices came nearer, "and that I ain't in touch with,--but
to know if you think I'd better bring him--or"--

He did not finish the sentence, for the door had opened suddenly, and
a half-dozen laughing girls and their escorts burst into the room.
But among them, a little haughty and still irritated from her last
interview, was her cousin Julia Jeffcourt, erect and beautiful in a
sombre silk.

"Go," repeated Miss Sally, in an agonized whisper. "You must not be
known here."

But the attention of Julia had been arrested by her cousin's agitation,
and her eye fell on Corbin, where it was fixed with some fatal
fascination that seemed in turn to enthrall and possess him also. To
Miss Sally's infinite dismay the others fell back and allowed these two
black figures to stand out, then to move towards each other with the
same terrible magnetism. They were so near she could not repeat her
warning to him without the others hearing it. And all hope died when
Corbin, turning deliberately towards her with a grave gesture in the
direction of Julia, said quietly:--

"Interduce me."

Miss Sally hesitated, and then gasped hastily, "Miss Jeffcourt."

"Yer don't say MY name. Tell her I'm Joseph Corbin of 'Frisco,
California, who killed her brother." He stopped and turned towards her.
"I c