upted,
passionately; "if I could offer you a hand unstained by the blood of a
fellow creature!"

She laid a hand gently upon his shoulder and looked straight into his
eyes: "Don't, Win," she said; "don't always hark back to _that_. Let
us forget."

"I wish to God I could forget!" he answered, bitterly. "I know the act
was justified. I believe it was unavoidable. But--it is my New
England conscience, I suppose."

Alice smiled: "Don't let your conscience bother you, because it is a
New England conscience. They call you 'the pilgrim' out here. It is
the name they called your early Massachusetts forebears--and if history
is to be credited, they never allowed their consciences to stand in the
way of taking human life."

"But, they thought they were right."

"And you _know_ you were right!"

"I know--I know! It isn't the ethics--only the fact."

"Don't brood over it. Don't think of it, dear. Or, if you must, think
of it only as a grim duty performed--a duty that proved, as nothing
else could have proved, that you are every inch a man."

Endicott drew her close against his pounding heart. "It proved that
the waters of the Erie Canal, if given the chance, can dash as madly
unrestrained as can the waters of the Grand Canyon."

She pressed her fingers to his lips: "Don't make fun of me. I was a
fool."

"I'm not making fun--I didn't know it myself, until--" the sentence was
drowned in a series of yells and curses and vile epithets that brought
both to the door to stare down at the trussed-up one who writhed on the
ground in a very paroxysm of rage.

"Conscience hurting you, or is it your jaw?" asked Endicott, as he
grinned into the rage-distorted features.

"Git them hosses outa that alfalfy! You ---- ---- ---- ---- ----!
I'll hev th' law on ye! I'll shoot ye! I'll drag yer guts out!" So
great was the man's fury that a thin white foam flecked his
hate-distorted lips, and his voice rose to a high-pitched whine.
Endicott glanced toward the two horses that stood, belly-deep, in the
lush vegetation.

"They like it," he said, calmly. "It's the first feed they have had in
two days." The man's little pig eyes glared red, and his voice choked
in an inarticulate snarl.

Alice turned away in disgust. "Let him alone," she said, "and we will
have dinner. I'm simply famished. Nothing ever looked so good to me
in the world as that ham and potatoes and corn and peas." During the
course of the meal, Endico