is?"

A picture of Dennie down in the Kickapoo Corral, with the flickering
firelight on her rippling hair, the weird, shadowy woodland, and the old
Indian legend all came back to the young man now, though why he could
not say.

"I certainly would never bring harm to you nor yours," he said kindly.

"I can't inform on the scoundrel. I can only watch him. The woman he was
in love with years ago, who would n't stand for his wild ways--that's
the gray-haired woman at Pigeon Place. Her life's been one long tragedy,
though she is not forty yet."

The anguish on the old man's face was pitiful as he spoke.

"She has a reason of her own for living here, and she is the soul of
courage. On the night of the Fenneben accident, I was out her way--yes,
running away from Bond Saxon. I knew if I stayed in town, I'd get drunk
on a bottle left at my door. So I tore out in the rain and the dark to
fight it out with the devil inside of me. And out at Pigeon Place I run
onto this fiend. When I ordered him back to his hiding place, he vowed
he'd get Fenneben and put him in the river. There's one or two human
things about him still. One is his fear of little children, and one is
his love for that woman. He really did adore her years ago. I tracked
home after him, and you know the rest. He put up some story to the Dean
to entice him out there."

He hesitated, then ceased to speak.

"Why the Dean?" Burgess asked.

"Because Lloyd Fenneben's the man she loved years ago, and her folks
wouldn't let her marry," Bond Saxon said sadly.

Burgess felt as if the limestone ridge was giving way beneath him.

"Where is she now?"

"She's gone, nobody knows where. I hope to heaven she will never come
back," the old man replied.

"And it was she who saved Dr. Fenneben's life? Does he know who she is?"

"No, no. She's never let him know, and if she does n't want him to know,
whose business is it to tell him?" Saxon urged. "I have hung about and
protected her when she never knew I was near. But when I'm drunk, I'm
an idiot and my mind is bent against her. I'd die to save her, and yet
I may kill her some day when I don't know it." Bond Saxon's head was
drooping pitifully low.

"But why live in such slavery? Why not tell all you know about this man
and let the law protect a helpless woman?" Burgess urged.

Old Bond Saxon looked up and uttered only one word--"Dennie!"

Vincent Burgess turned away a moment. Dennie! Yes, there was Dennie.

"This w