The sun was slowly sinking. The long shadow of Reservoir Ridge fell upon Conroy's Hill, and seemed to cut down the tall pine that a moment before had risen redly in the sunlight. The sounds of human labour slowly died out of the Gulch below, the far-off whistle of teamsters in the Wingdam road began to fail. One by one the red openings on the wooded hillside opposite went out, as if Nature were putting up the shutters for the day. With the gathering twilight Ramirez became more intensely alert and watchful. Treading stealthily around the lone pine tree, with shining eyes and gleaming teeth, he might have been mistaken for some hesitating animal waiting for that boldness which should come with the coming night. Suddenly he stopped, and leaning forward peered into the increasing shadow. Coming up the trail from the town was a woman. Even at that distance and by that uncertain light, Ramirez recognised the flapping hat and ungainly stride. It was Sal--perdition! Might the devil fly away with her! But she turned to the right with the trail that wound toward Gabriel's hut and the cottage beyond, and Victor breathed, or rather panted, more freely. And then a voice at his very side thrilled him to his smallest fibre, and he turned quickly. It was Mrs. Conroy, white, erect, and truculent. "What are you doing here?" she said, with a sharp, quick utterance. "Hush!" said Ramirez, trembling with the passion called up by the figure before him. "Hush! There is one who has just come up the trail." "What do I care who hears me now? You have made caution unnecessary," she responded, sharply. "All the world knows us now! and so I ask you again, what are _you_ doing here?" He would have approached her nearer, but she drew back, twitching her long white skirt behind her with a single quick feminine motion of her hand, as if to save it from contamination. Victor laughed uneasily. "You have come to keep your appointment; it is not my fault if I am late." "I have come here because for the last half-hour I have watched you from my verandah, coursing in and out among the trees like a hound as you are! I have come to whip you off my land as I would a hound. But I have first a word or two to say to you as the man you have assumed to be." Standing there with the sunset glow over her erect, graceful figure, in the pink flush of her cheek, in the cold fires of her eyes, in all the thousand nameless magnetisms of her presence, there was so much of her old power over this slave of passion, that the scorn of her words touched him only to inflame him, and he would have grovelled at her feet could he have touched the thin three fingers that she warningly waved at him. "You wrong me, Julie, by the God of Heaven! I was wild, mad, this morning--you understand--for when I came to you I found you with another! I had reason, Mother of God! I had reason for my madness, reason enough; but I came in peace. Julie, I came in peace!"