His altered tone startled her into attention. It was sharp with repressed passion and pain. The poor sot was in earnest--more in earnest, it seemed to her, even than Cabarreux had been when he had told her that he loved her to-day. "Miss Calhoun, do you remember one day three or four years ago, when I was knocked down in a drunken fight at Sevier, and lay like a beast on the roadside?" "Major Fetridge--" "Hush! I must tell you: I never spoke to you about it before. You passed by. You were a little thing then--the people in Sevier had left me there like a dead dog--but you tried to rouse me, to take me home; and when you could not do it, you spread your handkerchief over my face to hide it. I have it yet. Look there! Such a scrap of a thing!" opening it out. "Any girl would have done it. Why do you bring up this miserable story now?" cried Isabel. "Because on that day I swore before Almighty God that if ever I reached my place in the world you should stand beside me. Oh!" pacing up and down with a bitter laugh, "I wasn't always the drunken bummer Sam Fetridge. I have within me great capabilities--even yet, yet. _You_ saw that. You saw the man I might have been, and never was. Every word you have ever spoken to me has showed me that you saw it." The words and the uncontrollable excitement of the man had a singular effect upon Isabel. Something in the voice, the words, came from a strong soul in desperate strait--belonged to a man with intellect and energy, for whom she could have near sympathy, a sense of alliance; but before her eyes was only ridiculous Sam Fetridge, the butt of the village, vaporing up and down. "It is true," she said frankly, "that your life in Sevier has been wretched enough. I thank God that you are going to change it. What can I do to help you?" "Don't you know? Don't you understand even yet?" The little man came up before her and took both her hands in his: the tears stood in his blinking eyes. Isabel looked into them steadily, and she did not take her hands away. "You see it is a sort of crisis to-night with me, Miss Calhoun. I've thought for a good while the game was played out for body and soul. But there's one thing that could make a man of me again, and to-night I feel as if I had some right to put out my hand and take it." Her lips moved, but she said nothing. "It is your love. I've loved you a long time. I'm old enough to be your father, but I never loved any woman but you, Isabel." "I thought you meant that," she said under her breath. "It is not drunken Sam Fetridge that loves you. I have culture, intelligence, energy. I am a better man at bottom than Dave Cabarreux, and one nearer akin to yourself." "I love him: I do not love you." She said it mechanically, her eyes fixed on his with a frightened, curious look of recognition. It followed him as he left her, half staggering across the porch: it was on him still as he came back, and, leaning against the pillar, held out his hand again to her.