They were sitting in the hospital garden, he at her side on the bench that he called their bench. It was here he had made his unrebuked avowal--here, he had afterward told her, that he began to live. "Give you up," he echoed with gentleness. "How could I do that? You're like the morning for me, Nan. Without you there's no day; you're the kiss of the mountain wind and the light of the stars to me. Without the thought of you I'd sicken and faint in the saddle, I'd lose my way in the hills; without you there would be no to-morrow. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, if I think of you strength wells into my heart like a spring. I never could give you up." He told her all would be well because it must be well; that she _must_ trust him; that he would bring her safe through every danger and every storm, if she would only stick to him. And Nan, sobbing her fears one by one out on his breast, put her arms around his neck and whispered that for life or death, she _would_ stick. It was not hard for de Spain next morning to find Duke Morgan. He was anxious on Nan's account to meet him early. The difficulty was to meet him without the mob of hangers-on whose appetite had been whetted with the prospect of a death, and perhaps more than one, in the meeting of men whose supremacy with the gun had never been successfully disputed. It required all the diplomacy of Lefever to "pull off" a conference between the two which should not from the start be hopeless, because of a crowd of Duke's partisans whose presence would egg him on, in spite of everything, to a combat. But toward eleven o'clock in the morning, de Spain having been concealed like a circus performer every minute earlier, Duke Morgan was found, alone, in a barber's hands in the Mountain House. At the moment Duke left the revolving-chair and walked to the cigar stand to pay his check, de Spain entered the shop through the rear door opening from the hotel office. Passing with an easy step the row of barbers lined up in waiting beside their chairs, de Spain walked straight down the open aisle, behind Morgan's back. While Duke bent over the case to select a cigar, de Spain, passing, placed himself at the mountain-man's side and between him and the street sunshine. It was taking an advantage, de Spain was well aware, but under the circumstances he thought himself entitled to a good light on Duke's eye. De Spain wore an ordinary sack street suit, with no sign of a weapon about him; but none of those who considered themselves favored spectators of a long-awaited encounter felt any doubt as to his ability to put his hand on one at incomparably short notice. There was, however, no trace of hostility or suspicion in de Spain's greeting.