down while I get a light."
She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that
the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had
some accident," she said, with a scrutinizing but not ungentle glance.

"Only a scratch," he answered, in a mechanical way, as if thinking of
something else. "But my coat was nearly torn off my back scrambling
through the chaparral yonder." He had not taken the chair she pointed
out to him, but stood--leaning with the heaviness of fatigue against the
shelf that served as a table--looking at her in the lamp-light. She saw
how pale and haggard and half-famished-looking he was, and turned
promptly to set out the supper.

"Wait, Barbara," he said, abruptly, and evidently with an effort. "Don't
be doing anything for me till you know what you're doing. Those d----
hounds of the Vigilance Committee are after me; they're on my track now.
They'll string me up to the nearest tree if they catch me; it's my life
that's in your hands at this minute. I know too well I don't deserve of
you that you should save it. And on the whole, Barbara," he added, with
a touch of the light and half-mocking coolness she remembered of old,
yet with more of bitterness now, "I don't know that it's worth saving."

[Illustration: "HAGGARD AND HALF FAMISHED."]

Barbara turned even paler than she had been as she listened to his
words. "What is it you have done?" she asked.

"Oh, I've not killed anyone. Better for me if I had! One may shoot a
man, but to take a horse is a hanging matter here."

"Tell me about it, Oliver," she said, preserving her self-possession,
for she was no fragile flower to wilt and droop before the first breath
of danger--no, nor the last.

"It's soon told," he answered. "I had bad luck--I was cleaned out, not a
red cent in my pockets--and so I hired out to a farmer away in Pine
Valley. We had words one day, and he refused to pay me my wages--so I
took a horse out of his stables and rode off."

"It was madness, Oliver," she said; for she knew as well as he did that
for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant
mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be accused, death to be
detected.

"The horse was worth no more than my fair wages," he rejoined. "I was
warned that they were after me, but I thought I'd got a good start of
them. They were too sharp for me, though--they cut across by Devil's
Ford, and were after me in full chase. T