ntinued its course. He went on
somberly.

"Out there," he said, pointing toward the west, "out beyond the big
river, there's a place where the wilderness sweeps. Out there the
law is that of the old times. It is far away."

"How dare you speak in such way to me?" she half whispered, low and
tense. "And you claim manhood!"

"No," he said, sighing. "I--claim nothing. I deny nothing. I
assert nothing--except that I'm going to be not your Jailer, but
your keeper. Yes, I'm going to hold you, keep you! You shall not
get away. Why," he added, pacing apart for a moment. "I have no
shame left. I've planned very little. I thought I might even ask
you to be a guest at my own plantation. My place is out on the
edge of the world, thirty miles back from the river. An amanuensis
is as reasonable there as on this boat, in the company of a
frontier army man."

"That, then, is your robber castle, I suppose."

"I rule there, Madam," he said simply.

"Over thrall and guest?"

"Over all who come there, Madam."

"I've heard of the time," she went on icily, "when this country was
younger, how the _seigneurs_ who held right under the old French
kings claimed the law of the high, low and middle justice. Life,
death, honor, all lay in their hands--in the hands of individuals.
But I thought those times past. I thought that this river was
different from the St. Lawrence. I thought that this was a
republic, and inhabited by men. I thought the South had
gentlemen--"

"You taunt me, my dear lady, my dear girl. But be not so sure that
times have changed. Out beyond, there, where we are going, I could
put you a mile back from the river, and you would find yourself in
a wilderness the most pathless in the world to-day, worse than the
St. Lawrence ever knew at any time, more lawless, more beyond the
reach of any law. These lands out here are wild; yes, and they
breed wild men. They have been the home of others besides myself,
lawless, restless under any restraint. If you come to wildernesses,
and if you come to the law of the individual, I say we're only just
approaching that sort of thing right now, and here."

She looked at him, some inarticulate sort of sound in her throat,
fully frightened now, seeing how mistaken she had been. He went on:

"Out there in the big valleys beyond the river, you would indeed
disappear. No man could guess what had become of you. You would
never be found again. And without any d