met them all in the
road--posse and prisoners. Chief Thompson knew me and told me all. And
so you've done it--and you're master in your old house again. Clarence,
old boy! Jim said you wouldn't do it--said you'd weaken on account of
her! But I said 'No.' I knew you better, old Clarence, and I saw it in
your face, for all your stiffness! ha! But for all that I was mighty
nervous and uneasy, and I just made Jim send an excuse to the theatre
and we rushed it down here! Lordy! but it looks natural to see the old
house again! And she--you packed her off with the others--didn't you?
Tell me, Clarence," in her old appealing voice, "you shook her, too!"

Dazed and astounded, and yet experiencing a vague sense of relief with
something like his old tenderness towards the willful woman before him,
he had silently regarded her until her allusion to his wife recalled him
to himself.

"Hush!" he said quickly, with a glance towards the corridor.

"Ah!" said Susy, with a malicious smile, "then that's why Captain
Pinckney was lingering in the rear with the deputy."

"Silence!" repeated Clarence sternly. "Go in there," pointing to the
garden room below the balcony, "and wait there with your husband."

He half led, half pushed her into the room which had been his business
office, and returned to the patio. A hesitating voice from the balcony
said, "Clarence!"

It was his wife's voice, but modified and gentler--more like her
voice as he had first heard it, or as if it had been chastened by some
reminiscence of those days. It was his wife's face, too, that looked
down on his--paler than he had seen it since he entered the house. She
was shawled and hooded, carrying a traveling-bag in her hand.

"I am going, Clarence," she said, pausing before him, with gentle
gravity, "but not in anger. I even ask you to forgive me for the foolish
words that I think your still more foolish accusation"--she smiled
faintly--"dragged from me. I am going because I know that I have
brought--and that while I am here I shall always be bringing--upon you
the imputation and even the responsibility of my own faith! While I am
proud to own it,--and if needs be suffer for it,--I have no right to
ruin your prospects, or even make you the victim of the slurs that
others may cast upon me. Let us part as friends--separated only by our
different political faiths, but keeping all other faiths together--until
God shall settle the right of this struggle. Perhaps it may