These thoughts were intolerable to the "King," who had hitherto been victorious always, and now his rage centred on Harley; he saw Harley everywhere, at every point of the compass wherever he looked, and when he came out of the saloon and went down the deserted street he saw Harley in reality, strolling along absently, his eyes upon the ground. He thought first that the correspondent was on his way to join the crowd around the speaker's stand, but he soon perceived that he was going in another direction. It was "King" Plummer's first impulse--there was still liquid fire in his veins--to overtake Harley and demand the only kind of satisfaction that such a man as he should have. Then he wished to see where Harley was going, because he had a premonition--false in this case, the meeting was by accident--that he was on his way to Sylvia; so he decided to follow as an animal stalks its game. Only the most powerful emotion conjoined with other circumstances could have made the "King" do such a thing, as his nature was essentially open, and he loved open methods. Yet he trailed his enemy with the skill and cunning of an Indian. He saw Harley and Sylvia meet, and all his suspicions were confirmed. Again he felt a fierce impulse, and it was to rush upon the guilty pair, but he restrained it and still followed. His perceptions were trained to other things, but he was in no danger of being seen by them; they were too much absorbed in each other, and all the world passed by them unnoticed. The "King," though a rough, blunt man, saw this, and it made the fire in him burn the hotter. He saw them stop at last, he saw Harley kiss Sylvia, and then he saw the girl turn away. He waited until he saw Sylvia pass over the swell, and then he took his opportunity. Whether he would have fired if Sylvia had not come he could not say to himself afterwards in his cooler moments. Remorse upon this point tortured him for some time. When he turned away he saw nothing. He was agitated by the powerful truth that Sylvia preferred death with Harley to life with him, and all his views were inward. He still did not know what he would do, but there was much of a moving nature to him in the scene that he left. He had never before seen such a look on a woman's face as that on Sylvia's when she threw herself upon Harley's breast and defied his bullet; it was beautiful and wonderfully pathetic, and something like a sob came from the burly "King." Harley, too, had borne himself like a man; there was no fear in the face of the Eastern youth when he looked into the muzzle of the pistol that threatened instant death; "King" Plummer remembered more than once in the early days when he had been covered by the levelled weapon of an enemy, and he knew how hard it was in such a case to control one's nerves and keep steady. He could not help respecting a courage fully the equal of his own.