The sight angered him. In as insulting a passion had John Barrett railed at him, Dwight Wade, when he had asked for the hand of John Barrett's daughter. The man had tossed his arms in the same way when he called Wade "a beggar of a school-master." "Don't call it blackmail and murder--not to me, Mr. Barrett," he said, harshly. "Don't you know it's blackmail and a put-up job to ruin me?" roared the timber baron. Wade stood up now and faced him. Torrents of rain beat upon them, and they took no heed; for the face of the young man was working with a mighty emotion and the features of the other man showed that sudden fear had come upon him. "Have you ever seen that daughter of yours that you left to wallow with human swine?" demanded Wade, with a fury he could not restrain. "Well, I have!" Into those words he put all the bitter resentment of months of remembrance of John Barrett's insults. "And I have seen the daughter you cherish in your home. I don't need any man's say-so to prove to me that they're both your children, Mr. Barrett. You stand convicted in the eyes of every man who has eyes and who sees Elva Barrett and then looks on poor Kate Arden--even her name a cruel jest! I don't want to hear a man like you lie, Mr. Barrett. Don't talk any more to me about blackmail." He shook his fist at the roof of the Jerusalem fire station, just showing above the ledges. "I know that girl over there is your daughter. Now go slow, Mr. Barrett, with your threats of what you will do to Lane. If there is any unwritten law, he deserves to have the forfeit of the life that I've helped to save. That's still a matter between you two. But as to that girl yonder, I propose to ask something. What are you going to do with her?" Barrett muttered incoherently, dazed by the new light of Wade's words. "Your blackmail story may go with woodsmen, Mr. Barrett. But if Lane should go out of these woods with his story and that girl to back it he can hold you up to execration by every decent person in the State. The girl proves it in every feature of her face." "The lunatic tried to make me take her home, own her publicly, and treat her as a daughter--and he demanded that to ruin me. It would ruin me in my political prospects, Wade. You know it. I'm willing to do what's right. But I can't do that." His courage revived a little. "I'd rather go down fighting." The young man pondered awhile. "I don't want you to think that I'm persecuting you for any of the trouble between us, Mr. Barrett," he said, at last. "That is all over and done with. But as a man who knows what that poor girl has been condemned to, and like others here who can tell by their own eyes that Lane is speaking the truth, I'm going to see that she gets a fair show." Barrett concealed his private doubts as to the young man's animus. But sudden dread of this new weapon in his foe's hand mastered him.