heavy to bear. Then Governor Vandecar
began to speak, and Fledra looked at him.

"I have come to take back my own, Lon Cronk," said he, "that of which
you robbed me many years ago."

"I ain't nothin' that belongs to ye, and ye'd better go back where ye
comed from, Mister--and don't--come no nearer!"

As the squatter spoke, his lips spread wide over his teeth, and he began
picking up and laying down the bits of white wood. He did it
deliberately, and no one present imagined how the sight of Vandecar tore
at his heartstrings. Cronk could tolerate no robbing him of his revenge,
no taking away his chance of soothing the haunting spirit of his dead
woman.

Again Ann touched the governor's arm.

"Don't, Dear!" he said, pushing her back a little. "Lon Cronk--I want to
tell you--a story."

Cronk made no response; only stooped over and gathered a few slender
whittlings, and stacked them up among the others. There was an intense,
biting silence, until the governor spoke again.

"Nineteen years ago, when I lived in Syracuse, there came to me an
opportunity to convict a man of theft. Then I was young and happy; I
knew nothing of deep misery, or of--deep love." The hesitation on his
last words brought a shake from the squatter's shoulders. "This man, as
I have said, was a thief, admitted his crime to me; but, at the time of
his conviction, he pleaded with me that he might go home for a little
while to see his wife, who was ill. But of course I had no authority to
do that."

A dark shade flashed over Cronk's face, followed by one of awful
suffering.

"Yep, ye had," he repeated parrot-like; "ye might have let him go."

"But I couldn't," proceeded the governor, "and the man was taken away to
prison without one glance at the woman who was praying to see him. For
she loved him more--than he did her."

"That's a lie!" burst from Cronk's dry puckered lips.

"I repeat, she loved him well," insisted Vandecar; "for every breath she
took was one of love for him."

In the hush that followed his broken sentence, Lon moved one big foot
outward, then drew it back.

"Afterward--I mean a few hours after the man was taken away--I began to
think of him and his agony--over the woman, and I went out to find her.
She was in a little hut down by the canal,--an ill-furnished, one-room
shanty,--but the woman was so sweet, so little, yet so ill, that I
thought only of her."

A dripping sweat broke from every pore in Lon's body, and drops