And the Mistress of Last's flung herself on her knees, gathered up this strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard against her breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his face from her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, the tears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly. This was love! This agony--this ecstasy--this sublime forgetting of all the world beside--this reward after struggle. Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut in his palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward the first trees that presented themselves--and he could not see where he was going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes. This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon in the high country--this dumb ache that locked his throat--this high courage that brought him serving love's object to the bitter-sweet end. How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, like the weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon's voice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells of Last's, in rapid question and answer--and Kenset's voice, too, weak and slow, but filled with joy unspeakable. It was lilting and soft, a lover's voice, a victor's voice, and presently he caught a few of the broken words that passed between them--"Clean! Clean! Oh, Tharon, darling--there is no blood on these dear hands! Tell me you did not kill Courtrey!" He heard Tharon answer in the negative. And then all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun cracked from the trees beyond him and a wasp stung his cheek. In one instant the sunlight became brilliant again, the joy came back in the day. Here was something more to do for Tharon, a new task at hand when he had thought his tasks were all but done. He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and lost itself. This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of Courtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which the others refused. Billy had seen him before, knew his record. Now they two stood face to face and fired at each other swiftly, coolly. He saw the half-breed stagger once, knew that he had touched him somewhere. And then a sound cut into the snapping of the shots, a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard in all his life before, a sound as savage as the roar of a she-bear whose cub is killed before her eyes. As he flung away his empty gun and snatched the other, he moved enough to bring into his range of vision Tharon Last, standing over Kenset, her mouth open in that savage cry.