tell her, but she would
listen to nobody, saying proudly, "Jacques shall explain to me...."

He had been waiting at the foot of Storm hill, watching her window,
desperate for news of how she did, when Kildare came galloping down the
road. Before Benoix could speak, he had reined in his horse, crying out;
"You, is it? I thought I'd catch you skulking around. You'll find a new
brat at the house; female, of course. If it's yours, you're welcome to
it--damn you!"

Benoix, blind with sudden fury, tried to drag him from his horse.
Kildare struck with his whip, broke away, jeering back over his
shoulder. Then Benoix found to his hand a jagged piece of rock, and
flung it straight at the grinning face that mocked him. Kildare's horse
reared, toppled...

A negro who had seen it all came trembling out of the hedge and found
the French doctor striving to staunch a wound in Kildare's temple, from
which blood and brains oozed together.

Benoix finished with Kate's face hidden on his breast "Oh, Jacques,
Jacques!" she shuddered. "It was for me, then--you tried to defend me!
But--perhaps the fall killed him, not your stone?"

"Perhaps," said her lover, soothing her.

In a moment she lifted her head. "Now," she cried, "we will face this
thing together!" She proposed that he should marry her at once.

He knew nothing of Kildare's will; but he refused, would not listen, hid
his eyes with his hand so that the pleading of her face would not weaken
him.

"I've dragged you low enough without that, my Kate. Remember your
children," he bade her, sternly, "Remember my boy. We have more than
ourselves to consider."

She could not move him, neither with tears nor with kisses. The jailor
came.

As they led him away, her voice followed him so that the grim place rang
with it! "Your boy shall be mine till you come for us both. Jacques,
I'll wait, I'll wait!"

Benoix was right. The best lawyers to be had could not keep him from the
penitentiary. The judge, a just and troubled man who had known Kildare
from boyhood, laid what emphasis he could on the uncertainty of the
case, the probability that Benoix had fought in self-defense. The jury
would have none of it. Popular prejudice had transformed the master of
Storm into a hero, a martyr to the unwritten law, who had given his life
to defend the sanctity of his home. It did not help the accused that he
was a stranger in the State, reputed to be an atheist, had not even a
decent, pronounce