t then--red quicksilver. But this
passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At
any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I
can't run away! Miss Jane says I'll be chuck full of education by next
winter--how can I go to jail? She says every hope she has is in me!"
Brent winced. "She says she trusts me more'n any feller she ever saw!"
Brent winced again. "How can I go to jail?"

So it was true. The engineer laughed, but it sounded more like the
stirring of ice.

"Don't divulge any more of her confidences. You've said enough--too
much. I assure you. The thing to talk about now is how to save you. Are
you sure you killed him?"

"'Course I did. Do you reckon I miss a man at three rod?"

"Then someone found his body, for it wasn't there when the Colonel went.
Sooner or later the trail will lead here. I've thought, perhaps, you
might slip away and go home with me. You can study there. Later, when
things blow over, you can come back."

"An' Miss Jane'll go?" he asked, hopefully.

"Certainly not," Brent flushed.

"I'll see what she says," Dale dubiously suggested.

"You'll do nothing of the sort! Would you have her know about this
mess?"

"It seems like she's pretty apt to know," he answered.

There was cruel truth in this; she was pretty apt to know beyond a
doubt; and Brent pictured what it would mean to a girl who believed and
had such implicit trust in one to find him a willful murderer. He
thought a moment of the blind sister, the helpless one of patient
waiting, of prayerful days; all dark, all dark, except for the hopeful
coming of that day when her brother should stand irreproachable before
the world and hear the applause of men. Slowly he spoke; it was of the
second plan, formed in a white hot crucible of passion as Jane had
walked away from him that morning.

"Several times Tusk has threatened to kill me if I persisted in building
the road across his patch of land. He stopped me one night on the pike
and laid hold of my bridle rein, and I had to get down and punch his
head. Why shouldn't he have tried to fix me early this morning when I
might have been up in that country?--and why shouldn't I have shot him
in self-defense?"

"I reckon you could," the mountaineer doggedly answered.

"Well, prod up your brains, man, or I'll begin to doubt if you're as
scintillating us everybody says! Don't you see what has to be done if
the sheriff gets wind of the thi