of water
rolled down his dark face. He groped about for another stick of wood, as
if blind.

"She was too young, too small, Lon Cronk, for the cross she had to
bear."

Lon threw up his head.

"Jesus! what a blisterin' memory!" he said.

His throat almost smothered the words. Ann began to sob; but Katherine
stood like a stone image, staring at the squatter.

The governor's low voice went on again:

"She was sicker than any woman I'd ever seen before, and when I was
there her little baby was born. I held her hands until she died. I
remember every message she sent you, Cronk. She told me to tell you how
much she loved you, and how the thought of your goodness to her and your
love would go down with her to the grave. If I could have saved her for
you, I should have done so; but she had to go. Then I wrote and asked
you if I should care for her body."

An evil look overspread the squatter's face. The misty tears cleared,
and he began to scrape again at the wood. He flashed a murderous look
upward.

"Ye could have left her dead in the hut, as long as yer killed her!"
said he.

Not heeding the interruption, Vandecar went on:

"But you sent me no word, and, because I was sorry, and because--"

The knife slipped from Lon's stiffened fingers, and a long groan fell
from his lips.

"I didn't get no word from ye!" he burst out. "I didn't know nothin'
till they told me she were dead." The man's head dropped down on his
chest.

Relentlessly Vandecar spoke again:

"Because I could not give you to her when she wanted you, and because
she had suffered so, I took her body and placed it in our family plot. I
went to the prison to tell you this, so that you could go to her grave
whenever you wished; but you had escaped the night before I arrived
there, and I never associated you with my great loss."

The revenge Cronk had planned upon this man suddenly lost its savor
before the vividly drawn picture. He did not remember that Vandecar had
come for his girl; he had in mind only the wee, sweet squatter woman so
long dead.

"Didn't the warden tell ye that I hit him, Mister," he groaned, "and
that I smashed the keeper when they telled me about her, and--and that
the strait-jacket busted my collarbone when I was tryin' to get out to
her?"

Vandecar shuddered and shook his head; but before he could speak Cronk
wailed dazedly:

"Ye might have come and telled me yerself, ye might a knowed how I
wanted ye to!"

"I told y