He heard Oldring whisper and saw him sway like
a log and fall. Then a million bellowing, thundering voices--gunshots of
conscience, thunderbolts of remorse--dinned horribly in his ears. He had
killed Bess's father. Then a rushing wind filled his ears like a moan of
wind in the cliffs, a knell indeed--Oldring's knell.

He dropped to his knees and hid his face against Bess, and grasped her
with the hands of a drowning man.

"My God!... My God!... Oh, Bess!... Forgive me! Never mind what I've
done--what I've thought. But forgive me. I'll give you my life. I'll
live for you. I'll love you. Oh, I do love you as no man ever loved
a woman. I want you to know--to remember that I fought a fight for
you--however blind I was. I thought--I thought--never mind what I
thought--but I loved you--I asked you to marry me. Let that--let me have
that to hug to my heart. Oh, Bess, I was driven! And I might have known!
I could not rest nor sleep till I had this mystery solved. God! how
things work out!"

"Bern, you're weak--trembling--you talk wildly," cried Bess. "You've
overdone your strength. There's nothing to forgive. There's no mystery
except your love for me. You have come back to me!"

And she clasped his head tenderly in her arms and pressed it closely to
her throbbing breast.

CHAPTER XIX. FAY

At the home of Jane Withersteen Little Fay was climbing Lassiter's knee.

"Does oo love me?" she asked.

Lassiter, who was as serious with Fay as he was gentle and loving,
assured her in earnest and elaborate speech that he was her devoted
subject. Fay looked thoughtful and appeared to be debating the duplicity
of men or searching for a supreme test to prove this cavalier.

"Does oo love my new mower?" she asked, with bewildering suddenness.

Jane Withersteen laughed, and for the first time in many a day she felt
a stir of her pulse and warmth in her cheek.

It was a still drowsy summer of afternoon, and the three were sitting
in the shade of the wooded knoll that faced the sage-slope Little Fay's
brief spell of unhappy longing for her mother--the childish, mystic
gloom--had passed, and now where Fay was there were prattle and laughter
and glee. She had emerged Iron sorrow to be the incarnation of joy and
loveliness. She had growl supernaturally sweet and beautiful. For Jane
Withersteen the child was an answer to prayer, a blessing, a possession
infinitely more precious than all she had lost. For Lassiter, Jane
divined that