cessary for you to take my
message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish--_not_ Mary
Graham--is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
him that she belongs to _me_. I love her. She is mine--do you
understand? And all the money in the world couldn't buy one hair from
her head. I'm going to take her back to the States. She is going to get
a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has
nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham
for me."

He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
clenched, his face a mask of iron.

"Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!"

The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent
the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.

"Go--before I kill you!"

He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and
the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten
power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed
quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan
watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied
by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did
Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His
breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did
not return for his coat and hat.

The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the
table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at
work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he
hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him.
He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god
of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely.
Graham would now get his message, and there could be no misunderstanding
of purpose between them.

He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at
the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.

"You sent him away," she cried softly.

Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful
glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland's hat and coat on a chair,
the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and
then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the
last of that grim resolution which he had mea