the crucial moment his courage would fail him and he would let
the widow thrust him back. Suddenly I became aware that there were two
new spectators of this comedy. I started and looked again, and was
near to crying out at sight of one of them. The others did cry out, but
Tipton paid no heed.

Ten years had made his figure more portly, but I knew at once the man
in the well-fitting hunting shirt, with the long hair flowing to his
shoulders, with the keen, dark face and courtly bearing and humorous
eyes. Yes, humorous even now, for he stood, smiling at this comedy
played by his enemy, unmindful of his peril. The widow saw him before
Tipton did, so intent was he on the struggle.

"Enough!" she cried, "enough, John Tipton!" Tipton drew back
involuntarily, and a smile broadened on the widow's face. "Shame on you
for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you--Colonel Sevier."

Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into
such profanity as I have seldom heard.

"By the eternal God, John Sevier," he shouted, "I'll hang you to the
nearest tree!"

Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the
gentleman beside him.

"I have surrendered to Colonel Love," he said.

Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me,
and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might
yet be held in its pan. We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and
myself,--all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while
we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the
widow, the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with
something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple.

Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time Riddle's words of long
ago came to me, "God help the woman you love or the man you fight." How
shall I describe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,--yet it
was the frailness of the race-horse. The golden hair, sun-tanned, awry
across his forehead, the face the same thin and finely cut face of the
boy. The gray eyes held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more
dangerous than that. Colonel John Tipton looked, and as I live he
recoiled.

"If you touch him, I'll kill you," said Mr. Temple. Nor did he say it
angrily. I marked for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim
fingers. What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings
is mere conjecture, for Colonel Se