r that purpose. As yet no intention of injury to the man
except in self-defense was in his mind. If actually attacked, he must
defend himself, of course, but he wished more than anything to drive the
intruder away with no collision. That was what he hoped for. The time
went on, and the strain upon the doctor's nerves was nearly driving him
mad. Sometimes the mare balked for hours. He began to hope that Aaron
would leave her, and return home on foot. That would settle the matter.
But he remembered a strange trait of obstinacy in Aaron. He remembered
how he had once actually sat all night in the buggy while the mare
balked. The man balked as well as the horse. "The damned fool," he
muttered to himself in an agony. The dog growled in response. Then it
was that first the thought came to Gordon of what might be done to save
them all. He stood aghast with the horror of it. He was essentially a
man of peace himself, unless driven to the wall. He was a good fighter
at bay, but there was in his heart, along with strength, utter good-will
and gentleness toward all his kind. He only wished to go his way in
peace, and for those whom he loved to go in peace, but that had been
denied him. He began considering the nature of the man whose dark figure
remained motionless on the driveway. He knew him from the first. It
sounded sensational, his recapitulation of his knowledge, but it was
entirely true. It was that awful truth, which is past human belief,
which no man dares put into fiction. That man out there had been from
his birth a distinct power for evil upon the face of the earth. He had
menaced all creation, so far as one personality may menace it. He was a
force of ill, a moral and spiritual monster, and the more dangerous,
because of a subtlety and resource which had kept him immune from the
law. He outstripped the law, whose blood-hounds had no scent keen enough
for him. He had broken the law, but always in such a way that there was
not, and never could be, any proof. There had not been even suspicion.
There had been knowledge on Gordon's part, and Mrs. Swing's, but
knowledge without proof is more helpless than suspicion with it. The man
was unassailable, free to go his way, working evil.

Again Gordon thought he heard the nearing trot of a horse, and again the
dog growled. Gordon was not quite sure that time that a horse had not
passed the house. He told himself in despair that he could not be sure
of knowing when James and Cleme