Henderson; or if she doesn't, I do--an' that
it's as much as a daicent girl's good name is worth to be seen spakin'
to you. Now, I tell you again to pass on. Don't force either yourself or
your conversation upon her, if you're wise. I'm here to protect her--an'
I won't see her insulted for nothing."

"Do you mean that as a threat, my good fellow?"

"If you think it a threat, don't deserve it, an' you won't get it. If
right was to take place, our family would have a heavy account to settle
with you and yours; and it wouldn't be wise in you to add this to it."

"Ha! I see--oh, I understand you, I think--more threatening--eh?"

"As I said before," replied Dalton, "that's as you may deserve it. Your
cruelty, and injustice, and oppression to our family, we might overlook;
but I tell you, that if you become the means of bringin' a stain--the
slightest that ever was breathed--upon the fair name of this girl, it
would be a thousand times betther that you never were born."

"Ah! indeed, Master Dalton! but in the mean time, what does Miss
Sullivan herself say? We are anxious to hear your own sentiments on this
matter, Miss Sullivan."

"I would feel obliged to you to pass on, sir," she replied; "Condy
Dalton is ill, and badly able to bear sich a conversation as this."

"Here," said Dalton, fiercely, laying his hand upon Mave's shoulder, "if
you cross my path here--or lave but a shadow of a stain, as I said, upon
her name, woe betide you!"

"Your wishes are commands to me, Miss Sullivan," replied Henderson,
without noticing Dalton's denunciation in the slightest degree; "and, I
trust that when we meet again, you won't be guarded by such a terrible
bow-wow of a dragon as has now charge of you. Good bye! and accept my
best wishes until then."

He immediately set spurs once more to his horse, and in a few minutes
had turned at the cross roads, and taken that which led to his father's
house.

"It was well for him," said Dalton, immediately after he had left them,
"that I hadn't a loaded pistol in my hand--but no, dear Mave," he added,
checking himself, "the hasty temper and the hasty blow is the fault of
our family, an' so far as I am consarned, I'll do everything to overcome
it."

Mave now examined him somewhat more earnestly than she had done; and
although grieved at his thin and wasted appearance, yet she could not
help being forcibly struck by the singular clearness and manly beauty
of his features. And yet this beaut