nights, and no food. You can't last it
out," she said, calmly.

The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness.

"It is my vow to my brudder--he is in purgatore. An' I mus' do it," he
rejoined, with an emphasis there was no mistaking. "You can show me dat
way?"

She went to a drawer and took out a piece of paper. Then, with a point of
blackened stick, as he watched her and listened, she swiftly drew his
route for him.

"Yes, I get it in my head," he said. "I go dat way, but I wish--I wish it
was dat queeck way. I have no fear, not'ing. I go w'en dat moon rise--I
go, _bien sur._"

"You must sleep, then, while I get some food for you." She pointed to a
couch in a corner. "I will wake you when the moon rises."

For the first time he seemed to realize her, for a moment to leave the
thing which consumed him, and put his mind upon her.

"You not happy--you not like me here?" he asked, simply; then added,
quickly, "I am not bad man like me brudder--no."

Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though realizing him, while some
thought was working in her mind behind.

"No, you are not a bad man," she said. "Men and women are equal on the
plains. You have no fear--I have no fear."

He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at her. "My mudder, she
was good woman. I am glad she did not lif to know what Fadette do." His
eyes drank her in for a minute, then he said: "I go sleep now, t'ank
you--till moontime."

In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the only sound save for
the fire within and the frost outside.

Time went on. The night deepened.

* * * * *

Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned from it toward
the man on the sofa. She was not agitated outwardly, but within there was
that fire which burns up life and hope and all the things that come
between us and great issues. It had burned up everything in her except one
thought, one powerful motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice had
been about to give "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But the
man lying there had come to sweep away the scaffolding of justice--he had
come for that.

Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but
still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor's
reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast;
but the reprieve was with her.

If he left without discovering h