ntally on his legs.

"I reckon I kin walk now," he said, drearily, "ef so be ye lets me go
slow--I hain't got much of my stren'th back yit."

"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," responded Thornton; "we've got all
night afore us."

* * * * *

When they reached the house, it stood mistily bulked among shadows, with
its front door open upon an unlighted room.

The men had tramped down that slope in silence, and they crossed the
threshold in silence, too, the captive preceding his captor; and the
householder paused to bolt the door behind him.

Then, holding a vigilant eye on the forced guest who had not spoken,
Thornton lighted a lamp and backed to the closed bedroom door at whose
sill he had seen a slender thread of brightness. In all his movements he
went with a wary slowness, as though he were held by a cord, and the
cord was the line of direct glance that he never permitted to deviate
from the face of his prisoner.

Now while his right hand still fondled the revolver, he groped with his
left for the latch and opened the door at his back.

"Dorothy," he called in a low voice, "I wisht ye'd come in hyar, honey."

From within he heard a sound like a low moan; but he knew it was a sigh
of relief loosening tight nerve cords that had been binding his wife's
heart in suspense.

"Thank God, ye're back, Ken," she breathed. "Air ye all right--an'
unharmed?"

"All right an' unharmed," he responded, as he stepped to the side of the
door frame and stood there a rigid and unmoving sentinel.

But when Dorothy came to the threshold, she took in at once the whole
picture, pregnant with significance: the glint of lamplight on the ready
revolver, the relentless, tooth-marked face of her husband, and the
figure of the vanquished plotter with its powerful shoulders hunched
forward and its head hanging.

On the mantel ticked the small tin clock, which Bas Rowlett watched from
the tail of a furtive eye.

As Dorothy Thornton stood in gracious slenderness against the background
of the lighted door with a nimbus about her head, she was all feminine
delicacy and allurement. But in that moment she stiffened to an
overwhelming rush of memories which incited her to a transport of wrath
for which she had no words.

She saw Bas Rowlett stripped naked to the revolting bareness of his
unclean soul, and she drew back with a shudder of loathing and
unmoderated hate.

"Why did ye dally with him, Ken?" she