e window, watching the shadow, with tears in her
eyes and an ache in her breast.

From that day Joan lived a life of seclusion in the small room. Kells
wanted it so, and Joan thought best for the time being not to take
advantage of Bate Wood's duplicity. Her meals were brought to her by
Wood, who was supposed to unlock and lock her door. But Wood never
turned the key in that padlock.

Prisoner though Joan was, the days and nights sped swiftly.

Kells was always up till late in the night and slept half of the next
morning. It was his wont to see Joan every day about noon. He had a care
for his appearance. When he came in he was dark, forbidding, weary, and
cold. Manifestly he came to her to get rid of the imponderable burden
of the present. He left it behind him. He never spoke a word of Alder
Creek, of gold, of the Border Legion. Always he began by inquiring for
her welfare, by asking what he could do for her, what he could bring
her. Joan had an abhorrence of Keils in his absence that she never felt
when he was with her; and the reason must have been that she thought of
him, remembered him as the bandit, and saw him as another and growing
character. Always mindful of her influence, she was as companionable,
as sympathetic, as cheerful, and sweet as it was possible for her to be.
Slowly he would warm and change under her charm, and the grim gloom, the
dark strain, would pass from him. When that left he was indeed another
person. Frankly he told Joan that the glimpse of real love she had
simulated back there in Cabin Gulch was seldom out of his mind. No woman
had ever kissed him like she had. That kiss had transfigured him. It
haunted him. If he could not win kisses like that from Joan's lips, of
her own free will, then he wanted none. No other woman's lips would ever
touch his. And he begged Joan in the terrible earnestness of a stern and
hungering outcast for her love. And Joan could only sadly shake her head
and tell him she was sorry for him, that the more she really believed
he loved her the surer she was that he would give her up. Then always
he passionately refused. He must have her to keep, to look at as his
treasure, to dream over, and hope against hope that she would love him
some day. Women sometimes learned to love their captors, he said; and if
she only learned, then he would take her away to Australia, to distant
lands. But most of all he begged her to show him again what it meant to
be loved by a good wo