ight come to her. Along about that time I fell into terrible
moods--I changed--I learned I really loved her. Then came a letter I
should have gotten months before. It told of her trouble--importuned
me to hurry to save her. Half frantic with shame and fear, I got a
marriage certificate and rushed back to her town. She was gone--had
been gone for weeks, and her disgrace was known. Friends warned me to
keep out of reach of her father. I trailed her--found her. I married
her. But too late!... She would not live with me. She left me--I
followed her west, but never found her."

Warren leaned forward a little and looked into Cameron's eyes, as if
searching there for the repentance that might make him less deserving
of a man's scorn.

Cameron met the gaze unflinchingly, and again began to speak:

"You know, of course, how men out here somehow lose old names, old
identities. It won't surprise you much to learn my name really isn't
Cameron, as I once told you."

Warren stiffened upright. It seemed that there might have been a
blank, a suspension, between his grave interest and some strange mood
to come.

Cameron felt his heart bulge and contract in his breast; all his body
grew cold; and it took tremendous effort for him to make his lips form
words.

"Warren, I'm the man you're hunting. I'm Burton. I was Nell's lover!"

The old man rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down upon
him, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands. The harsh
contact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before it was too late.
Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled to the ground and
stamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened giant. There was a
reeling, swaying, wrestling struggle before the elder man began to
weaken. The Cameron, buffeted, bloody, half-stunned, panted for speech.

"Warren--hold on! Give me--a minute. I married Nell. Didn't you know
that?... I saved the child!"

Cameron felt the shock that vibrated through Warren. He repeated the
words again and again. As if compelled by some resistless power,
Warren released Cameron, and, staggering back, stood with uplifted,
shaking hands. In his face was a horrible darkness.

"Warren! Wait--listen!" panted Cameron. "I've got that marriage
certificate--I've had it by me all these years. I kept it--to prove to
myself I did right."

The old man uttered a broken cry.

Cameron stole off among the rocks. How long he absented himse