"You told me that you shot him!" "Yes, I told you so--but I didn't!" "What _are_ you driving at? If you didn't shoot him, then why did you ask me to run away like a coward? What good did it do you--my making a coward and a fool of myself--if you were innocent?" "Can't you see?" "No, I can't." "I--I thought you had done it. What else could I think? And I wanted you to get away." "But after I told you I didn't do it? It was not until then that you said you shot him!" "I am ashamed of myself--miserably ashamed!" "So it was just a silly trick, Flora? Nothing but an idiotic joke, to see what I would do for you." "But it wasn't--a joke--or a trick," she sobbed. "I--I didn't believe you. I wanted you--to escape--but I wanted you to--trust me. And I thought you--would confess to me--if I said I did it." "And when I didn't? You thought I was lying to you? You still thought so?" "I am bitterly ashamed!" "You believed me to be a fool, a liar, and a coward! You believed that I shot an unarmed man from cover and intended to bluff the sheriff, but that I was willing to run, eager to run, as soon as you said you were guilty. You believed that I was willing to pretend that you had shot him! Good Lord! It's too deep for me! Nice opinion you had of me! And still have, I suppose." "I was crazy with anxiety--for you. I didn't think! I didn't reason! And when old Mrs. Wilson said that she had shot Hammond I--I hated myself! I despised myself--and I still do!" "Mrs. Wilson? The queer old dame I gave cartridges to. I might have thought of that! So the police are still after me, I suppose?" "No. She told the sheriff that she did it, and it is all right." He drank tea, but refused to eat. Then he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. Flora gathered a supply of wood for the night, made herself a bed of boughs and took to her blankets with a heavy heart. She had wronged Jim past forgiveness, so it seemed. She had judged him as she might have judged other young men of her acquaintance--Homer Steeves and Melchior Hammond, for instance, and all through her mad anxiety for his safety. Now, remembering everything she had seen and heard of him, she realized how foolish and unjust she had been even in her first mad mistake of believing that he had fired upon an unarmed man. CHAPTER XIII THE WIND ON THE BARREN