d took him, I'd have killed him. Cynthy, I
love you--I want you to be my woman--"

"Your woman!"

He caught her, struggling wildly, terror-stricken, in his arms, beat down
her hands, flung back her hood, and kissed her forehead--her hair, blown
by the wind--her lips. In that moment she felt the mystery of heaven and
hell, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like a seed flying in
the storm above the mountain spruces whither, she knew not, cared not.
There was one thought that drifted across the chaos like a blue light of
the spirit: Could she control the storm? Could she say whither the winds
might blow, where the seed might be planted? Then she found herself
listening, struggling no longer, for he held her powerless. Strangest of
all, most hopeful of all, his own mind was working, though his soul
rocked with passion.

"Cynthy--ever since we stopped that day on the road in Northcutt's woods,
I've thought of nothin' but to marry you--m-marry you. Then you give me
that book--I hain't had much education, but it come across me if you was
to help me that way--And when I seed you with Worthington, I could have
killed him easy as breakin' bark."

"Hush, Jethro."

She struggled free and leaped away from him, panting, while he tore open
his coat and drew forth something which gleamed in the lantern's rays--a
silver locket. Cynthia scarcely saw it. Her blood was throbbing in her
temples, she could not reason, but she knew that the appeal for the sake
of which she had stooped must be delivered now.

"Jethro," she said, "do you know why I came here--why I came to you?"

"No," he said. "No. W--wanted me, didn't you? Wanted me--I wanted you,
Cynthy."

"I would never have come to you for that," she cried, "never!"

"L-love me, Cynthy--love me, don't you?"

How could he ask, seeing that she had been in his arms, and had not fled?
And yet she must go through with what she had come to do, at any cost.

"Jethro, I have come to speak to you about the town meeting tomorrow."

He halted as though he had been struck, his hand tightening over the
locket.

"T-town meetin'?"

"Yes. All this new organization is your doing," she cried. "Do you think
that I am foolish enough to believe that Fletcher Bartlett or Sam Price
planned this thing? No, Jethro. I know who has done it, and I could have
told them if they had asked me."

He looked at her, and the light of a new admiration was in his eye.

"Knowed it--did you?"

"