She stood a moment more, comforted to be on watch with him and thinking sadly of all there was to be on watch for. Then she heard Julian softly call her name. Without looking his way she started back for Mrs. Gilmore and the gold hunter, but the brother overtook her. "Ramsey." She faced him. "Ramsey"--his tone was thin--"when you were talking just now with that pusillanimous whelp, and neither of you looking at the other, did he say anything of a confidential nature?" His scrutiny read confirmation in her fearless eyes. When she would have spoken her utterance failed and, unable to do anything else half so well, she laughed. "You can still do that!" His hint was of Basile. "A little," she tinkled again, though her eyes ran full. "Ramsey, did he--over there--just now--that reptile--say anything--tender?" She flared rose-red, gazed down ashore, dropped her voice to a key he had never heard, and said, wondering why she said it: "Mr. Courteney is a gentleman." She tried to lift her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. He clinched his teeth. "Sis," he half whispered as she began to go, "listen." She glanced back. "Sis, you may snigger at us all day or ten days; you may listen to him for a year or for ten; but, no matter what we swore to last night, the day you accept Hugh Courteney's hand we'll kill him if we're alive." Old Joy flinched and moaned but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one word shed light, quickened her inner vision and gave it a reach, a forward range, it had never known. "Ten years," he had said, and for the first time in her life, as one might come suddenly into some vast possession, she took the future into her present by years instead of days. "Jule," called Lucian, from between the senator and the general. Julian glanced back and Ramsey started off. But she stopped again with a fresh shock as a high-pitched yell rose from the shore below. There the exhorter, stepping from the stage to the ground, had poured his voice into the woods and now turned to the boat and let loose his tongue: