For an instant Cassandra waited thus, as if she too were struck dead where she stood. Then she looked no more on the fallen man, but only at Frale, with eyes immovable and yet withdrawn, as if she were searching in her own soul for a thing to do, while her heart stood still and her throat closed. Those great gray eyes, with the green sea depths in them, began to glow with a cruel light, as if she too could kill,--as if they were drawing slowly from the deep well of her being, as it were, a sword from its scabbard wherewith to cut him through the heart. Her hand stole to her throat and pressed hard. Then she lifted it high above her head and held it, as if in an instant more one might see the invisible sword flash forth and strike him. Frale cried out then, "Don't, don't curse me, Cass," and lifted his arm to shield his face, while great beads of moisture stood out on his face. "It's not for me to curse, Frale." Her voice was low and clear. "Curses come from hell, like what you been carrying in your heart that made you do this." Her voice grew louder, and her hand trembled and shut as if it grasped something. "I take it back--back from God--the promise I gave you there by the fall." Then, looking up, her voice grew low again, though still distinct. "I take that promise back forever, oh, God!" Her hand dropped. The cruel light died slowly out of her eyes, and she turned and knelt by the prostrate man, and began pulling open his coat. Frale took one step toward her. "Cass," he said, with shaking voice, "I'll he'p you." Her hands clinched into David's coat as she held it. "Go back. Don't you touch even his least finger," she cried, looking up at him from where she knelt like a creature hurt to the heart, defending its own. "You've done your work. Take your face where I never can see it again." He still stood and looked down on her. She turned again to David, and, thrusting her hand into his bosom, drew it forth with blood upon it. "I say, you Frale!" she cried, holding it toward him, quivering with the ferocity she could no longer restrain, "leave here, or with this blood on my hand I'll call all hell to curse you." Frale turned with bowed head and left her there. CHAPTER XVIII IN WHICH DAVID THRYNG AWAKES Thryng lay in Hoke Belew's cabin,--not in the one great living-room where were the fireplace and the large bed and the tiny cradle, but in the smaller addition at the side, entered only from the porch which extended along the front of both parts. He still lay on the litter upon which he had been placed to carry him down the mountain,--an improvised thing made by stretching quilts across two poles of slender green pines. The litter was placed on low trestles to raise it from the floor, and close to the open door to give him air. David had not regained consciousness since his hurt, but lay like one dead, with closed eyes and blanched lips; yet they knew him to be living.