sheet. Suddenly she
felt something wet and warm trickle from his arm down into her hand.
Blood! She shuddered, but did not lose her hold. After a faintish
instant there came a change in her.

"Are you--hurt?" she asked.

"I guess--not. I don't know," he said.

"But the--the blood," she faltered.

He held up his hands. His knuckles were bloody and it was impossible to
tell whether from injury to them or not. But his left forearm was badly
cut.

"The gun cut me.... And he bit me, too," said Dorn. "I'm sorry you were
there.... What a beastly spectacle for you!"

"Never mind me," she murmured. "I'm all right _now!_... But, oh!--"

She broke off eloquently.

"Was it you who had the cowboys pull me off him? Jake said, as he broke
me loose, 'For Miss Lenore's sake!'"

"It was dad who sent them. But I begged him to."

"That was Glidden, the I.W.W. agitator and German agent.... He--just the
same as murdered my father.... He burned my wheat--lost my all!"

"Yes, I--I know, Kurt," whispered Lenore.

"I meant to kill him!"

"That was easy to tell.... Oh, thank God, you did not!... Come, don't
let us stop." She could not face the piercing, gloomy eyes that went
through her.

"Why should you care?.... Some one will have to kill Glidden."

"Oh, do not talk so," she implored. "Surely, now you're glad you did
not?"

"I don't understand myself. But I'm certainly sorry you were there....
There's a beast in men--in me!... I had a gun in my pocket. But do you
think I'd have used it?... I wanted to feel his flesh tear, his bones
break, his blood spurt--"

"Kurt!"

"Yes!... That was the Hun in me!" he declared, in sudden bitter passion.

"Oh, my friend, do not talk so!" she cried. "You make me--Oh, there is
_no_ Hun in you!"

"Yes, that's what ails me!"

"There is _not_!" she flashed back, roused to passion. "You had been
made desperate. You acted as any wronged man! You fought. He tried to
kill you. I saw the gun. No one could blame you.... I had my own reason
for begging dad to keep you from killing him--a selfish woman's
reason!... But I tell you I was so furious--so wrought up--that if it
had been any man but _you_--he should have killed him!"

"Lenore, you're beyond my understanding," replied Dorn, with emotion.
"But I thank you--for excusing me--for standing up for me."

"It was nothing....Oh, how you bleed!.... Doesn't that hurt?"

"I've no pain--no feeling at all--except a sort of dying down in me of