g back quietly at the little
crowd over his shoulder.

Yet for all that, these men who were so brave and defiant in open fight,
were awed and almost terrified by the strange and mysterious order that
moved so secretly and so certainly upon its victims, and no other man
there gave any expression to his thoughts.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PARSON'S PURSUIT OF LOVE.

But the Danites did not again openly appear. The Widow it seemed was now
secure, and the men began to forget that they had ever counted her the
last of the doomed family, or suspected that there was blood on her
hands.

As the Summer wore away, her suitors dropped off like early candidates
for office, and left the field almost entirely to the two leading men of
the camp--Sandy and the Parson.

Sandy was a man of magnificent stature, with a graceful flow of sandy
beard, but, as I have said, an awkward child of nature. A born leader of
men, but a man who declined to lead unless forced to come to the front
by his fellows and for the time take charge of whatever matter was under
consideration in the camp. Sandy was a man you believed in, trusted, and
honored from the first. There was not a crafty fiber or thought in his
physical or mental make-up.

The Parson was a successful miner; a massive, Gothic man, though not so
tall as Sandy. He had been a sailor, I think. At all events, he had a
blue band of Indian ink, with little diamonds of red set in between the
bands, on his left wrist. Possibly it was his right wrist, for I can not
recall positively at this distance of time, but I think it was the left.

The Parson was the first authority in history, politics, theology,
anything whatever that came up. I do not think he was learned; but he
was always so positive, and always so ready with his opinions, and
always so ready to back them up too, that all were willing to ask his
opinion in matters of doubt, and few were willing to question his
replies.

After awhile it became talked about that Sandy was losing ground with
the Widow--or, rather, that the Parson was having it pretty much his own
way there, as in other things in the camp, and that Sandy rarely put in
an appearance.

A year went by and then a pretty little cottage began to peep through
the trees from a little hill back of town; and then it came out that
this, with its glass windows and green window-blinds, was the property
of the Parson, and destined as the home of the Widow.

I think the camp w