The car moved away, bearing Carmel, Evan, and the doctor. Somehow it seemed like the end of the world to her--a definite stopping place of things. The lurid flames making a ghastly forest, black figures flitting about from shadow to shadow, the confusion of her thoughts, the piling up for days of event upon event and emotion upon emotion--all this seemed to be a climax--a finality. There was an unreality about it all, an unnatural crowding of events, a hustling and jostling, as if she were in an overwrought throng of occurrences, adventures, events, crises which pushed and shoved and harried her, striving ever to thrust her out of their way that they might march unimpeded. There rested upon her now a curious listlessness, a lifelessness, as if they had succeeded, as if they had elbowed her off the road of life, upon which she could never regain a footing. Gibeon was aroused; Gibeon was crusading! The thought awakened no thrill. She was safe; never again would she be threatened by the forces which she had challenged. She was free to pursue her way--but the knowledge came as dead knowledge. She did not care. She cared for nothing--because she knew, she was positive, Evan Pell had gone from her forever.... The car stopped before the doctor’s house and Evan was carried up to a bedroom, unconscious still.... Doctor Stewart tried to exclude her from the room, but she would not be excluded. This was all she had left; all life held for her--that faint, irregular beating of Evan Pell’s heart.... She knew those heartbeats were her own, would be her own so long as they persisted.... She would remain would sit by him watching, watching, waiting. This scarcely perceptible life was all she would ever have of him, and she dared lose no instant of it. Doctor Stewart worked over the bed. Carmel thought him calm, terribly indifferent, businesslike. He was a tradesman working at a trade when she would have had him a god performing a miracle.... After a time he turned to her. “I cannot tell,” he said. “Some concussion is present. There seems to be no fracture of the skull.... What internal injuries he may have suffered--it is impossible to say.... In the morning....” “He will be dead,” said Carmel. The doctor shook his head. “I do not think so. I hope--in such cases one cannot be sure--but----” “He will be dead,” said Carmel. “It is in God’s hand,” said the doctor. “They have killed him--because he was brave, because he loved me--because---- Oh, Doctor, that is the awful thought--he is dead for me. He gave his life for me.” His hand rested upon her shoulder with the gentle touch which some men learn by a life of service--and Doctor Stewart, country physician, unrecognized, unsung, had lived such a life. “My dear,” he said, “how better could a man die?” “_He_ killed him--Abner Fownes killed him.” “Abner Fownes has run his course,” said the doctor. “It is not enough--not enough. The law can do nothing to him which will make him pay.”