with fear and anxiety, not for
themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes
in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the
match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.

"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made
it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I
might kill you."

She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself
they were really there alive.

Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.

"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that
straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal
with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in
their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."

"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she
moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs
together.

"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the
first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he
came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between
the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I
see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up
yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did
not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added,
looking at her with admiring eyes.

"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed
face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.

Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now
staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and
his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless
between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he
wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of
mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with
herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the
flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred,
as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen,
reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a
sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in
his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then