ss Sarah's will alone proved insufficient. The girl refused,
point-blank, to go.

"He half undressed me and put me to bed," Barbara flung back in reply
to the spinster's final objection, "and if that did not shock you,
surely my staying now need not!"

The refusal itself brought a glint to the older woman's eyes and the
phrasing thereof a flush to her cheeks, but she wasted no more words in
what she knew to be useless argument. And though the girl grew sick
and sicker still while Miss Sarah cut away the sodden shirt and
started, with competent skill, to cleanse the wound, the latter let her
remain and hold a basin of antiseptic and replenish it when necessary.

Miss Sarah knew what to do; and she worked with unhurried thoroughness.
They had sent for the doctor, and after ages had passed for the girl,
maddeningly cool and unruffled, he arrived. But his first words, too,
were an order that she leave the room, and unable to combat his
professional bleakness, meekly she had to obey. Little and wholly
hopeless she stole downstairs.

Caleb and her father were confronting each other before the fireplace
when she reached the lower floor, but the queer note of restraint in
their voices meant nothing to her, until she heard her father cry out
in sudden anguish.

"Cal," he cried, "Cal, you don't think I was a party to this attempt at
murder?"

Then, at Caleb's reply, which went hurtling back at him, the girl was
crouching, white and still, and clutching at the stair-rail.

"Party! Attempt! Because you did not pull the trigger are you any the
less guilty?"

"Do you believe that I would murder the man my girl loves?" Dexter
Allison moaned now.

Barbara gasped at the deadly anger which crossed Caleb Hunter's face.
Caleb had lifted a hand in righteous accusation.

"You have dealt in crookedness," he thundered. "You have thrived on
cunning. And, being a law unto yourself in this country, you have gone
unpunished until now. You aided and abetted a vicious and unscrupulous
scoundrel in his villainy; and now you have looked upon the result of
your works. Law has never touched you, sir--reprisal has passed you
by. But, by God, sir, I warn you if that boy dies--if he dies--I shall
see that you meet me at thirty paces the next morning. And I shall not
miss--I shall be your law!"

They had been friends for close to forty years, yet they were worse
than strangers now. Dexter Allison could not answer; he could not
sp