McMasters paid no attention to the other men about the camp that evening, who, even after the foreman’s explanation, remained sullen and aloof. Without asking consent, he walked to the cook-cart plunder, unearthed his own bed roll and war bag and chose a place for himself outside the circle appropriated by the other hands. He made such toilet as he could, helped himself at the cook’s kettle and pans—breaking a two days’ fast—all without converse with the men who once had adjudged him unfit for their association. And in the twilight he walked without any by-your-leave directly to the camp of Taisie Lockhart and her servants. They watched him go. She saw him coming in the dusk; she felt her heart leap strangely. How could she keep her face calm, her eyes severe? “It is Mr. McMasters?” she spoke coldly, did not put out her hand. He had remained silent, his own face sad enough. “Why do you come—how dare you come?” She had not asked him to be seated; was treating him as though he were one of the hands; as though he were her enemy, not her hereditary friend or ally, not a man who had saved her life but now. It was hard even for his courage to endure. Something at last gave way. When he spoke a resonance was in his voice which she had never known before. “Dare? Why did I dare come? I dared not stay away!” “You always presume on obligations I never asked of you. But I can’t see—I don’t know——” “You know I love you; that’s the thing I can’t help. You couldn’t help knowing it. I am the man who kissed you that night in the dark—yes, I did that. You knew! I won’t tell you why I was there that night, or why I am here now. Forget what happened the other day at the river—you’d as well. The woman who doubts me once is done with me forever.” She could not speak to this new man, savage, impetuous, the chill all gone from him. “Dare? I do dare! I dare tell you that there will never be any other woman in the world for me. I’ll never be even the last man in the world for you.” Doubt, contrition, fear—a horrible fear that she had been cruelly unjust, a yet more terrible fear that he was going away—all mingled in the mind of the girl who heard him. “I cannot possibly understand how you could come. I don’t know why you should. Always you put a load on me.” Her own voice had been more certain at other times. His answer came very slowly. “A man has an indefeasible right to tell the one woman in the world that he cares for her, even if he is going to the gallows. I might as well be on my way to the gallows, so far as any chance with you is concerned. Chance? Why, a chance with you? I’d not give myself one if I could. Look at my hands!” He extended his hands, long, slender, well kept, so that she might see.