ukey. Lem's menacing shadow had lifted slowly from her
life, cast away by her own blood. For an instant there rose rampant in
her breast the desire to turn and fly, before another chance should be
given Lon to exert his authority over her. Then something snapped in her
head, and, unconscious, she sank noiselessly to the floor. No one
noticed her. She was like a small prey over which two great forces
ruthlessly fought and tore at human flesh and human hearts.

Vandecar gently touched Katherine's arm; but her feet were powerless to
move.

"Katherine," the governor groaned, "don't you remember that you cried
over him and your mother, and that--"

"Yes, yes!" Katherine breathed. She was trying to still the beating of
her heart, trying to thrust aside a great, revolting fear; yet she knew
intuitively that the squatter was her father, and remembered how the
recounting of her mother's death had touched her. In one flashing
thought, she recalled how she had longed for a mother, and how she had
turned away when other girls were being caressed and loved. But never
had it entered her mind to imagine that her parents were like this. The
picture of the hut in which the wee woman had died rose within her--the
death agony had been so plainly described. The tall, shrinking, sobbing
man against the wall was her father! Even that afternoon, when Governor
Vandecar had told her of her birth and her mother's death, and of her
father in the lake hut, she had not imagined him like this man. Yet
something pleaded for him, some subtle, gentle spirit hovering near
seemed to drag her forward. She shuddered, slipped from Vandecar's arms,
and crouched down before the squatter. She turned a livid, twitching
face up to his, her eyes beseeching his with infinite compassion. All
that was beautiful in the gentle, soulful girl broke over Ann like a
surging sea. This girl, who had been brought up in a beautiful home,
always attended with loving kindness, was casting her lot with a man so
low and vile that another person would have turned away in disgust. Miss
Shellington's mind recalled her girlhood days, in which Katherine had
been an intimate part. She could not bear it. She took an impulsive
forward step; but Vandecar gripped her.

"Stay," came sternly from his lips, "stay! But--but God pity her!"

The next seconds were laden with biting agony such as neither the
governor nor Ann had ever experienced. Katherine pleaded silently with
the man above