“What reason? No reason. Why should you hold back? Marry him just the same. I shall not interfere. I did not come for that. I came for money, and took this time in order to get what I want. I thought I hated you, but upon my soul, I don’t. I am sorry for you, to see you feel so bad, but there’s no cause for it. Swallow your conscience a little lower down. Act a bigger lie, and all will be right; for I tell you I am not here to claim any right I may have had in you. I dreamed you were dead. I’ll be honest and say I hoped it was true, for over the sea among the heather hills is a little blue-eyed, brown-haired Scotch lassie whom I call Janet, and who thinks she is my wife. There are also two children in the home-nest; _mine_, too, as well as _hers_,” he added, and again that red flush of shame crept into Georgie’s face, while the stranger continued; “I tried to reform over there for her sake. She is pure and good, and she loves me, and the fraud I practise upon her cuts me sometimes to the quick, and when I dreamed you were dead so many times I got to hoping you were, for then I’d do _her_ justice. So I came to see, and tracked you out, and found you on the topmost pinnacle, and felt angry when I saw your silks and satins and jewels and remembered Janet’s two dresses, one for every day and one for Sunday, and thought of my little boy Johnnie, who might be cured if I had the money. We are poor, very poor, and Janet thinks I am making my fortune here in America, for I told her it was for her sake and the bairns’ I came, and she is waiting for me so anxiously, and I am going to her soon; within a week at the farthest, but cannot go empty-handed. I did not enter that house on the mountain-road, as you probably think I did. I know nothing of the robbers. I quit such things after my escape from prison, and since I have known Janet I have tried to be honest and decent. I have been hanging about in this neighborhood for two weeks or more, trying to make up my mind whether to seek an interview with you and risk detection or not. I saved your life and Mr. Leighton’s too, but did not know when I seized the horses who was in the carriage. If I had, I should have done the same, though your death would make Janet an honest woman, for by finding some flaw in our first marriage ceremony I should coax her to go through with it again over the border in England.” “Oh, if you had let me die then,” Georgie moaned faintly, and her companion rejoined, “Nonsense; you are making too much of the matter. There’s no reason in the world why you should not marry just the same. I shall not trouble you, provided you do the fair thing by me. I want money. You want silence. It is a fair bargain. Did you bring anything with you?”