Diana rushed to him; she had seen more than he, but no warning of hers would have reached him in time, and now she did not think of herself, or of any possible danger. She dropped on her knees beside him and bent down to look into his face. His eyes were closed; she could not tell if he breathed, and even while she looked she saw a dark red stain on the breast of his coat. She uttered a low cry, and tried to raise his head on her arm. She realized at last the power that his very presence exerted, the influence that he had had over her from the very first, that had made her yield again and again to a sense of his mastery. She loved him. She no longer tried to deny it to herself, and she felt that it was to her shame that no accusation against him could shake her in her devotion. Whatever he had been she loved him; whatever his faults, in her eyes there must be, there would be, an extenuation; whatever his sins she could forgive them! Class prejudice counted for nothing; she was his, and nothing in the world mattered to her in that one blind moment of agony for his life. “Oh, God,” she prayed softly, “spare me this!” She was in despair, his head lay heavy on her arm, his blood stained her hands, and she was alone. The wind stirred and a dead leaf fluttered down. How still it was! To leave him and run for help seemed her only resource, but to leave him! She could not do it! She thought him dead, but not a tear came to her dry eyes; she looked down at his white face and marked the lines of trouble and anxiety, the resolution of the locked mouth and jaw. Did he breathe? “Oh, God!” she prayed again. She remembered, too, that it was here that he had told her so abruptly that he loved her. She, too, remembered that moment in the court-room, and a dry sob of anguish shook her from head to foot. She bent down suddenly and kissed him, but she could not shed a tear. Then, in the stillness, she heard wheels, and laying him gently down, she ran through the underbrush and reached the road just below the fork. It was Dr. Cheyney’s old buggy, and she cried to him that Caleb Trench was shot and lying wounded in the trail. The old man got down and followed her without a word, his lips set. They came up the trail and found Trench lying as she had left him; he did not seem to breathe. Dr. Cheyney knelt down and made a brief examination, then he looked for something to stop the bleeding. Diana gave him a long light scarf she had worn around her throat; she was quick and deft in her touch and worked steadily to help the doctor; she had mastered herself. The old man fumbling over Caleb drew out a bit of blood-stained paper and glanced at it. Then he went on with his task. “Is he living?” Diana murmured at last. “I reckon I wouldn’t do this if he wasn’t,” snapped the doctor. Then he rose from his knees. “You get into the buggy, Diana, and drive down to the house for help; telephone to the hospital, we’ll want a stretcher.”