She did not realize what it meant to take the life of another, even with full justification at her hand; she never had felt that weight of ashes above the heart, or the presence of the shadow that tinctured all life with its somber gloom. It was one thing for the law to absolve a slayer; another to find absolution in his own conscience. It was a strain that tried a man's mind. A woman like Vesta Philbrook might go mad under the unceasing pressure and chafing of that load. When they came to where his tools and wire lay beside the fence, she stopped. Lambert dismounted in silence, tied a coil of wire to his saddle, strung the chain of the wire-stretcher on his arm. "Did you know her before you came here?" she asked, with such abruptness, such lack of preparation for the question, that it seemed a fragment of what had been running through her mind. "You mean----?" "That woman, Grace Kerr." "No, I never knew her." "I thought maybe you'd met her, she's been away at school somewhere--Omaha, I think. Were you talking to her long?" "Only a little while." "What did you think of her?" "I thought," said he, slowly, his face turned from her, his eyes on something miles away, "that she was a girl something could be made out of if she was taken hold of the right way. I mean," facing her earnestly, "that she might be reasoned out of this senseless barbarity, this raiding and running away." Vesta shook her head. "The devil's in her; she was born to make trouble." "I got her to half agree to a truce," said he reluctantly, his eyes studying the ground, "but I guess it's all off now." "She wouldn't keep her word with you," she declared with great earnestness, a sad, rather than scornful earnestness, putting out her hand as if to touch his shoulder. Half way her intention seemed to falter; her hand fell in eloquent expression of her heavy thoughts. "Of course, I don't know." "There's no honor in the Kerr blood. Kerr was given many a chance by father to come up and be a man, and square things between them, but he didn't have it in him. Neither has she. Her only brother was killed at Glendora after he'd shot a man in the back." "It ought to have been settled, long ago, without all this fighting. But if people refuse to live by their neighbors and be decent, a good man among them has a hard time. I don't blame you, Vesta, for the way you feel." "I'd have been willing to let this feud die, but she wouldn't drop it. She began cutting the fence every summer as soon as I came home. She's goaded me out of my senses, she's put murder in my heart!" "They've tried you almost past endurance, I know. But you've never killed anybody, Vesta. All there is here isn't worth that price." "I know it now," she said, wearily. "Go home and hang your gun up, and let it stay there. As long as I'm here I'll do the fighting when there's any to be done." "You didn't help me a little while ago. All you did was for her."