"Men," he implored, "I beseeches ye ter hearken ter me one time more. A man thet's got ter be kilt kin always be kilt, but one thet's dead kain't be fotched back ter life. Hold off this bloodshed fer a spell yit.... Suffer me ter counsel with two or three Harpers an' Thorntons afore ye goes too fur!" So long had this man's voice held a wizardry of influence that even now, though the spirit of reconciliation had faint life in that meeting, a silence of respect and veneration followed on his words, and while it endured he gazed beseechingly around the group to meet eyes that were all obdurately grim and adverse. It was Hump Doane who broke the pause. "Save fer a miracle of luck, Jim, ye'd be a dead man now--an' whilst we tarries fer ye ter parley, you an' me an' others besides us air like ter die. Over-hastiness is a sorry fault--but dilitariness is oftentimes sorrier." * * * * * Back in the house that had grown around the nucleus of a revolutionary cabin sat the woman who had been for such a short time a wife--and who might so soon be a widow. She had risen from her knees at last after agonized praying, but even through her prayers came horrible and persistent pictures of what might be happening to the man who had smiled as he rode away. The insupportable dread chilled and tortured her that the brief happiness of her marriage had been only a scrap and sample, which would leave all the rest of life and widowhood bleaker for its memory and loss. Dorothy sat by the window with a face ghost-pallid and fingers that wound in and out of spasmodic clutchings. She closed her eyes in an effort to forget her nightmare imaginings and saw only more fantastic visions of a body sliding from its saddle and lying still in the creek bed trail. She rose at last and paced the room, but outside in the road her gaze fell on old Aaron who was uneasily pacing, too, and in his drooping shoulders and grimly set face she read no encouragement to hope. That morose and pessimistic figure held her gaze with a fascination of terror and she watched it until its pacing finally carried it around a twist of the road. Then she went out and stood under the tree which in its wordlessness was still a more sympathetic confidant than human beings. She dropped on her knees there in the long grass at the roots of the straight-stemmed walnut and for the first time some spark of hope crept into her bruised soul. She began catching at straws of solace and had she known it, placing faith and reliance in the source of all the danger, yet she found a vestige of comfort in the process--and that was something. "I'd done fergot," she exclaimed as she rose from her knees. "Most like Bas Rowlett's thar--so he'll hev one friend thet men won't skeercely das't ter defy. Bas'll stand by him--like he done afore." CHAPTER XVIII