rasing, perhaps it was from
some unusual authority of the man's manner, but a look of approving
relief and admiration came into McGee's clear eyes.

"And YOU'RE just the man to tackle 'em," he said, clapping his hand on
Wayne's shoulder. "That's your gait--keep it up! But," he added, in
a lower voice, "me and my revolver are played out." There was a
strangeness in the tone that arrested Wayne's attention. "Yes,"
continued McGee, stroking his beard slowly, "men like me has their day,
and revolvers has theirs; the world turns round and the Bar fills up,
and this yer river changes its course--and it's all in the day's work.
You understand what I mean--you follow me? And if anything should happen
to me--not that it's like to; but it's in the way o' men--I want you
to look arter Safie. It ain't every woman ez has two men, ez like and
unlike, to guard her. You follow me--you understand what I mean, don't
you?" With these words he parted somewhat abruptly from Wayne, turning
into the steep path to the promontory crest and leaving his companion
lost in gloomy abstraction. The next day Alexander McGee had departed on
a business trip to San Francisco.

In his present frame of mind, with his new responsibility and the
carrying out of a plan which he had vaguely conceived might remove the
terrible idea that had taken possession of him, Madison Wayne was even
relieved when his brother also announced his intention of going to
Angel's for a few days.

For since his memorable interview with McGee he had been convinced that
Safie had been clandestinely visited by some one. Whether it was the
thoughtless and momentary indiscretion of a willful woman, or the sequel
to some deliberately planned intrigue, did not concern him so much as
the falsity of his own position, and the conniving lie by which he had
saved her and her lover. That at this crucial moment he had failed to
"testify" to guilt and wickedness; that he firmly believed--such is the
inordinate vanity of the religious zealot--that he had denied Him in his
effort to shield HER; and that he had broken faith with the husband who
had entrusted to him the custody of his wife's honor, seemed to him more
terrible than her faithlessness. In his first horror he had dreaded
to see her, lest her very confession--he knew her reckless frankness
towards himself--should reveal to him the extent of his complicity. But
since then, and during her husband's absence, he had convinced himself
that