hat shaded the outer wall of his garden. As he gazed, the figure
of a man swung lightly from one of the upper boughs of a cotton-wood
on the wall and disappeared on the other side. It was evidently the
clandestine visitor. Demorest was in no mood for trifling. Hurriedly
driving his horse into the enclosure with a sharp cut of his riata, he
closed the gate upon him, slipped past the intervening space into the
patio, and then unnoticed into the upper part of the garden. Taking a
narrow by-path in the direction of the cotton woods that could be seen
above the wall, he presently came in sight of the object of his search
moving stealthily towards the house. It was the work of a moment only to
dash forward and seize him, to find himself engaged in a sharp wrestle,
to half draw his pistol as he struggled with his captive in the open.
But once in the clearer light, he started, his grasp of the stranger
relaxed, and he fell back in bewildered terror.

"Edward Blandford! Good God!"

The pistol had dropped from his hand as he leaned breathless against a
tree. The stranger kicked the weapon contemptuously aside. Then quietly
adjusting his disordered dress, and picking the brambles from his
sleeve, he said with the same air of disdain, "Yes! Edward Blandford,
whom you thought dead! There! I'm not a ghost--though you tried to make
me one this time," he said, pointing to the pistol.

Demorest passed his hand across his white face. "Then it's you--and you
have come here for--for--Joan?"

"For Joan?" echoed Blandford, with a quick scornful laugh, that made the
blood flow back into Demorest's face as from a blow, and recalled his
scattered senses. "For Joan," he repeated. "Not much!"

The two men were facing each other in irreconcilable yet confused
antagonism. Both were still excited and combative from their late
physical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it would
have been impossible for either to have comprehended the other. In the
figure that had apparently risen from the dead to confront him, Demorest
only saw the man he had unconsciously wronged--the man who had it in his
power to claim Joan and exact a terrible retribution! But it was part of
this monstrous and irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceased
to contemplate it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actual
interference of a man whom he no longer hated, but had begun to pity and
despise.

He glanced coolly around him. "Whatever we've got t