filled her eyes with dread,
and made her an embodiment of horror. Yet a stir of gratitude fought
with fear for a place in her.

"Thank God, I am not too late!" was her voiceless cry.

Through the clear air came the sound of a voice, sharply articulate.

"It is not enough that you eat my bread and go forth from my door to do
your treacherous act. You come again to my house to scorn at me after
my humiliation, and you have not the courage to own your falseness. And
now, when I demand from you the satisfaction that most surely do you
owe me, how do you make a mock at me? Is that a weapon with which
gentlemen do fight? Is it a shot-gun that men do carry to a duel?"

The hitherto still figure on the Doctor's horse stirred uneasily.

"And see, I break it." The mule turned back his ears, as upon them fell
the click of the opening gun, followed by the drop of a shell into an
open palm. "_Ach_, yes, I thought so! It needed only this! This so
small shot is for the birds!"

A thud vibrated on the air--the sound of the flung-down weapon.

"Now, if you-all were only an American, Ah could make you understand
right quick that----"

The Doctor's slow drawl was broken by an exclamation from von
Rittenheim. Morgan followed the German's eyes, and saw above them
against the fleckless blue of the heavens the brilliant figure of the
girl, her hands straining against her breast, her face a field where
anxiety and grief flitted like clouds across the background of the sky.

She came down towards them when she saw herself observed, and the two
men silently dismounted as she approached, and pulled off their caps,
less in salutation than from instinctive respect for deep emotion.

It was a poor little appeal she made, as words went. Her voice was
hardly whisper-high, so labored was her breathing. She held out her
hands to them one after the other, in supplication.

"You won't do it! Oh, please don't! I came---- You mustn't----" Her
breath came in gasps.

Von Rittenheim mutely took the pleading hands in his, and reverently
kissed them. He faced the Doctor brokenly.

"I thought you had heaped upon me every humiliation. Until now this was
lacking. You might have spared me this!"

Mounting his mule he broke into the thicket and disappeared.

The two left behind--the tawny, stooping Carolinian and the girl, gone
white-lipped in spite of the beating of her heart--stared in silence at
the copse as long as they could hear the crash of t