“I ain’t seen him sence he war at our house that night. I dunno what’s kem o’ him.” He stood impassive, silent, leaning upon his rifle, which he held with one hand, while the other was thrust in his leather belt. When she spoke he looked down at her, and his eyes met hers, but when she was silent he glanced with grave preoccupation at the leaden sky or the sombre ranges. “I ’lowed mebbe he hed gone home,” she said, after one of these intervals. It was so recently that she had become definitely aware how long it had been since he was at the house, how fully the recollection of his words had sufficed in the certain expectation of his return, that she was for the first time canvassing the probabilities. “Mebbe so,” he replied non-committally. She gave a sudden quick gasp, and turned pale. “Them men—them men, mebbe, hev tuk him at las’. They waylaid him agin,—hev they?—hev they?” “Not ez I hev hearn on,” he replied. His evident lack of excitement in regard to the possibility roused her anger anew. Her nerves were all a-quiver under the unexpected strain. She hardly sought to control her words; they were a relief to her tense, overwrought anxiety. “How kin ye stand thar an’ ’low, ‘Not ez I hev hearn on,’ ez keerless ez ef I war a-talkin’ ’bout a fox ketched in a trap? Ye _don’t_ keer, Teck Jepson, ye _don’t_ keer! Ye’d jes’ ez soon he would be kilt by them mis’able Brumsaidge rangers ez not. Ye air a cruel, bloodthirsty man. Ye _don’t_ keer ef the innercent stranger war kilt.” Despite his protestations of independence of spirit, he was roused to defend himself against this imputation. “Ef I hedn’t keered,” he said, his lip curling with a scornful half laugh, and his eyes far away, “I would’t hev gone with them fellers at the barn. I ’lowed I could hender ’em from doin’ ennything onjust, or hasty, or misch_iee_vious, though ef the stranger hed been at enny wicked device, I dunno ez I would hev pertected him an’ sot him free like I done.” Marcella’s heart was throbbing with contending emotions, the dominant feeling a resentment that Teck Jepson should thus credit himself with the rescue of Rathburn, the merits of which that young gentleman’s rhetoric had greatly exalted in her estimation, for she had thought it a simple, natural, matter-of-course action when she had first been moved to do aught in his behalf. She had logic enough to realize, however, that her timely warning and Rathburn’s clever boldness would have availed little had not Jepson’s mood been judicial, and the sway which he exerted over his comrades perfect and complete. Nevertheless her claim was not to be easily belittled. Her ingenuity renewed its hold. “Then,” she said, “ye let him off, I’ll be bound, not kase ye knowed ’twar right an’ jestice but jes’ kase ye fund out ez ’twar me ez hed warned the man, an’ ye ’lowed ’twould put me in a good humor with you-uns ef ye war ter holp me out an’ save his life. Ye done it ter please me.”