face, and there was
Nan. 'Bull,' she says, 'I'm sorry. I don't want to see you ride out in
this with nothing to eat; come this way quick.'

"She took me down cellar from the outside, under the kitchen. When
Gale goes out again she flings up the trap-door, speaks to Mex, pulls
all the kitchen shades down, locks the doors, and I sets down on the
trap-door steps 'n' eats a pipin' hot supper; say! Well, I reckon I
drank a couple o' quarts of coffee. 'Bull,' she says, 'I never done
you no harm, did I?' 'Never,' says I, 'and I never done you none,
neither, did I? And what's more, I never will do you none.' Then I up
and told her. 'Tell him,' says she, 'I can't get hold of a horse, nor
a pen, nor a piece of paper--I can't leave the house but what I am
watched every minute. They keep track of me day and night. Tell him,'
she says, 'I can protect myself; they think they'll break me--make me
do what they want me to--marry--but they can't break me, and I'll
never do it--tell him that.'

"'But,' says I, 'that ain't the whole case, Miss Nan. What he'll ask
me, when he's borin' through me with _his_ eyes like the way you're
borin' me through with yours, is: When will you see him--when will he
see you?'

"She looked worrit for a minit. Then she looks around, grabs up the
cover of an empty 'bacco box and a fork and begins a-writing inside."
Bull, with as much of a smile as he could call into life from his
broken nerves, opened up his blanket, drew carefully from an inside
coat pocket an oilskin package, unwrapped from it the flat, square top
of a tin tobacco box on which Nan had scratched a message, and handed
it triumphantly to de Spain.

He read her words eagerly:

"Wait; don't have trouble. I can stand anything better than bloodshed,
Henry. Be patient."

While de Spain, standing close to the lantern, deciphered the brief
note, Bull, wrapping his blanket about him with the air of one whose
responsibility is well ended, held out his hands toward the blazing
stove. De Spain went over the words one by one, and the letters again
and again. It was, after all their months of ardent meetings, the
first written message he had ever had from Nan. He flamed angrily at
the news that she was prisoner in her own home. But there was much to
weigh in her etched words, much to think about concerning her
feelings--not alone concerning his own.

He dropped into his chair and, oblivious for a moment of his
companion's presence, stared into th