e face of danger. Lew Turner had said: "She's been pinin' round like
somebody sickenin' ter her death!" That was what her full trust had
come to--and if she had trusted that far her trust might have gone
farther! Then finally from the secure distance of the city Henderson
had made his terms with Kinnard Towers!

Now Blossom was going to be married--a heart-racking groan rumbled in
his throat. Blossom's wedding! How he had dreamed of it from his first
days of callow love-thoughts! He had fed his imagination upon pictures
of the house he had meant to build for her down there by the river! To
his nostrils now seemed to come the sweet fragrance of freshly hewn
timbers and sawed lumber; incense of home-making! A hundred times he
had visualized himself--the ceremony over--riding proudly with his
bride on a pillion behind him, as the mountain groom had always brought
his bride, from her father's house to his own--and her own!

Now her honor required that an unwilling husband should be brought to
her--her honor and her heart's bruised wish--and he, who had planned it
all differently, must see the matter accomplished--to-night!

* * * * *

Henderson and his guard had strolled with a fine assumption of
carelessness into the barn-like resort and, as the handful of loiterers
there recognized them, an abrupt silence fell and glasses, half-raised,
were held for a moment poised.

From a huge hearth-cavern at one end of the room leaped the ruddy
illumination of burning logs and fagots in the flaming proportions of a
bonfire. Wreaths of blue and brown smoke floated in foggy streamers
between the dark walls and up to the cobwebbed rafters. The lamps
guttered and flared against their tin reflectors, reeking with an oily
stench in the stagnation of the unaltered air.

Along one end of the place went the bar, backed by its shelves of
bottles and thick glassware, and in each side wall gaped a door--one
for each state. Besides a few hickory-withed chairs there were several
even ruder tables and benches, riven with axe and adze out of wide
logs, and supported by such legs as those of a butcher's block. But
these furnishings were all near the walls--and the whole center area of
the floor, with its white-painted boundary line, was as unencumbered as
a deck cleared for action.

The momentary surprise which greeted the newcomers was for the most
part fictitious--and carefully rehearsed, but of this J