"Yes, yes, Creed," she murmured vehemently. "I did mean it--I sure meant every word of it. But we got to get right away from here. Do ye reckon ye can stand it to ride as far as the foot of the mountain? Ye got to go--and I'm here to take ye." They drew out of the path and into the deep blackness beneath the trees. There was but a hundredth chance that anybody would be passing here, or watching this point, yet that hundredth chance must be guarded against. Poor Creed, he detained her, he clung to her hands hungrily, and invoked the sound of her voice. So much hate had daunted him, the strength and sweetness of her presence, the warm tenderness of her tones, were like balm to his lacerated spirit. "I couldn't go to-night--dear----" he faltered, abashed that the first word he uttered to her must be a denial. "You're mighty sweet and good to offer to take me--I don't know what I have ever done that you should risk this for me--but I'm to have a chance to talk to your Uncle Jephthah at moonrise to-night, and I can't turn my back on that. He's a fair-minded man and I'll make this thing right yet." Judith shuddered. "Don't you never believe it," she urged in a panting whisper. "Uncle Jep hadn't a thing on earth to do with that word goin' to you. He's left home. I can't find him nowhars, or I'd have went straight to him and begged him to help me out when I found what the boys was aimin' to do. Hit was Blatch planned it all. I tell ye Creed, Blatch Turrentine is alive--you never killed him when you flung him over the bluff--and while he lives you can't stay here. He's bound to kill ye." "Have you seen Blatch, yourself, Judith?" Creed asked quickly. "Oh, laws, no. He's a layin' out in the woods somewheres, aimin' to make Uncle Jep believe you killed him. But I heard him plain enough--I heard him and the boys fix it all up--hid out from Uncle Jep down in the grain-room. There's to be seven of 'em a-waitin' down by the big hollow, and when they git you betwixt them an' the sky at moonrise they're all promised to shoot at once, so that nary man dast to go back on the others when you're killed." Wounded, appalled, the young fellow drew back from her and clung to the saddle of the old mule, with a boyish desire to hide his face against the arm which he threw over it. "How they hate me!" he breathed at last. "Oh, I've failed--I've failed. I meant so well by them all--and I've got nothing but their hate. But I won't run. I never ran from anything yet. I'll stay here and take what comes." Perhaps in his extremity the despair of this speech was but an unconscious reaching out for Judith's expressed affection, the warmth and consolation of her love. If this were so, the movement brought him what he craved. In terror she laid hold upon him, holding to his unwounded arm, pressing her cheek upon his shoulder, making her protest in swift passionate sentences.