"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at your expense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' love tunes for you an' the girl?" She sprang up in an agony of fear. "Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you come back calm, I will explain." He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan. "Love songs for _me?_" he repeated incredulously. "Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I was brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!" "While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man--" He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes. "Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?" "Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I not rather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under my thumbs--so?" McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye. "Well?" he said. "Yes, I lied to you." She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other. Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?" Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long imprisonment. "McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off my soul!" "Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under the whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her." "It'll be your ghost that returns." Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of McTee, those strong, cruel hands. "If you will not fight, I'll--I'll be kind to you, I'll be everything you ask of me--" "You're pleading for him?" "No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!" "Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim on Harrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean." "Angus, we're all alone here--on the rim of the world, you've said--and in places like this the eye of God is on you." He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way." "Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I see where my hands'll fit on your throat." "Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner of the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been a traveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your body into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the world." "Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and when you're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to watch you rot."