er in the night.
There was a murmur of the colonel's voice as Nelly came out of the
cabin.

And then, from the girl, a low cry.

It brought the blood to the cheeks of Nelly as she hurried down the
hill, for she recognized the pain that was in it; and it occurred to her
that if the girl was in love with Jack Landis she was strangely
interested in Donnegan also.

The thought came so sharply home to her that she paused abruptly on the
way down the hill. After all, this Macon girl would be a very strange
sort if she were not impressed by the little red-headed man, with his
gentle voice and his fiery ways, and his easy way of making himself a
brilliant spectacle whenever he appeared in public. And Nelly
remembered, also, with the keen suspicion of a woman in love how weakly
Donnegan had responded to her embrace this night. How absent-mindedly
his arms had held her, and how numbly they had fallen away when she
turned at the door.

But she shook her head and made the suspicion shudder its way out of
her. Lou Macon, she decided, was just the sort of girl who would think
Jack Landis an ideal. Besides, she had never had an opportunity to see
Donnegan in his full glory at Milligan's. And as for Donnegan? He was
wearied out; his nerves relaxed; and for the deeds with which he had
startled The Corner and won her own heart he was now paying the penalty
in the shape of ruined nerves. Pity again swelled in her heart, and a
consuming hatred for the three murderers who lived in her father's
house.

And when she reached her room again her heart was filled with a singing
happiness and a glorious knowledge that she had saved the man she loved.

And Donnegan himself?

He had seen Lou and her father: he had heard that low cry of pain; and
now he sat bowed again over his table, his face in his hands and a
raging devil in his heart.

41

There was one complication which Nelly Lebrun might have foreseen after
her pretended change of heart and her simulated confession to Joe Rix
that she still loved the lionlike Lord Nick. But strangely enough she
did not think of this phase: and even when her father the next morning
approached her in the hall and tapping her arm whispered: "Good girl!
Nick has just heard and he's hunting for you now!" Even then the full
meaning did not come home to her. It was not until she saw the great
form of Lord Nick stalking swiftly down the hall that she knew. He came
with a glory in his face which th