ity
that sounded from her own throat.

She went again to the door and looked out into a world that the shadows
had taken, save where the horizon glowed with a pallid green at the edge
of darkness. Leaning limply against the uprights of the frame and
clasping her hands to her bosom, she distrusted her senses when she
fancied she heard voices and saw two horsemen draw up at the stile and
swing down from their saddles. Then she crumpled slowly down, and when
Aaron and Parish Thornton reached the house they found her lying there
insensible.

They carried her to the four-poster bed and chafed her wrists and
poured white whiskey between her pale lips until she opened her eyes in
the glow of the lighted lamp.

"Did they hearken ter ye?" she whispered, and the man nodded his head.

"I compassed what I aimed at," he told her, brokenly, "but when I seed
ye layin' thar, I feared me hit hed done cost too dear."

"I'm all right now," she declared five minutes later; "I war jest
terrified about ye. I had nervous treemors."

The stars were hanging low and softly magnified when Aaron Capper
mounted to ride away, and at the stile he leaned in his saddle and spoke
in a melancholy vein.

"I seeks ter be a true Christian," he said, "an' I ought ter be down on
my marrow-bones right now givin' praise an' thanksgivin' ter ther
Blessed Lord, who's done held back ther tormints of tribulation, but--"
he broke off there and his voice trailed off into something like an
internal sob--"but yit hit seems ter me like es ef my three boys air
sleepin' res'less an' oneasy-like in th'ar graves ternight."

Parish Thornton laid a hand on the horseman's knee.

"Aaron," he admitted, "I was called on ter give a pledge of faith over
yon--an' I promised ter bide my time, too. I reckon I kin feel fer ye."

Informal and seemingly loose of organization was that meeting of the
next afternoon when three Harpers and three Doanes met where the shade
of the walnut tree fell across dooryard and roadway. The sun burned
scorchingly down, and waves of heat trembled vaporously along the
valley, while over the dusty highway small flocks of white and lemon
butterflies hung drifting on lazy wings. From the deep stillness of the
forest came the plaintive mourning of a dove.

Jim Rowlett, Hump Doane, and another came as representatives of the
Doanes, and Parish Thornton, Aaron Capper, and Lincoln Thornton met them
as plenipotentiaries of the Harpers.

When commonpl