Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a pendulum. He dreaded the long, black ride that would bring him to his camp, for he alone of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing his gaze out into the blackness of the night. He struggled against the temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel’s fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim Rodney’s face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate—Rodney’s face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney’s face! Henderson could not withdraw his fascinated gaze. He stood in the midst of the dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his hand to his eyes as if to brush away a cloud of swarming gnats, then threw up his arms and rushed from the room. The dancers paused in their mad whirl. Miguel’s bow stopped with a wailing shriek. Every eye turned towards the window for an explanation of Henderson’s sudden panic, but all was dark without on the prairie. The magic had gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery that had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead air. “What was it?” the dancers asked one another in whispers. And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith that was strange to them. There was about her a white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in her eyes something of Mary’s look, as she turned from Calvary. The dancers still kept the position of the figures, the men with their arms about their partners’ waists, the women stepping forward; they were like the painted figures of dancers in a fresco. And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her; it would be like dancing with the death angel. She looked from face to face. Surely some one would ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson, returning from the bottled courage in the bunk-room. Some word was due from him to explain his terror of a moment ago. “Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost when I seen you at the window.”