"I'd ruther heer Mr. Thornton talk thetaway," he declared, crisply, "then ter hev him answer up heedless an' over-hasty." With his knee brushing against that of old Jim Rowlett, Parish Thornton rode away from that meeting, and from the sentinels in the laurel he heard no hint of sound. When he had come to the place where his pistol lay hidden he withdrew it and replaced it in his pocket, and a little farther on where the creek wound its way through a shimmering glade and two trails branched, the veteran drew rein. "I reckon we parts company hyar," he said, "but I feels like we've done accomplished a right good day's work. Termorrow Hump an' me'll fare over ter yore house and git yore answer." "I'm obleeged," responded the new chief of the Thorntons, but when he was left alone he did not ride on to the house in the river bend. Instead he went to the other house upon whose door his first letter of threat had been posted, and hitching his horse in its dilapidated shed he set out on foot for the near-by place where Bas Rowlett dwelt alone. Twenty-four hours had been all he could ask in reaching a decision on such an issue, yet before he could make answer much remained to be determined, and in that determination he must rely largely on chances which he could not hope to regulate or force into a pattern of success. He had, for example, no way of guessing how long it would be before Bas returned to his farm or whether, when he came, he would be alone--and to-morrow's answer depended upon an unwitnessed interview between them. But he had arrived on foot and taken up his place of concealment at the back of the log structure with only a half-hour of waiting when the other man appeared, riding in leisurely unconcern and unaccompanied. Thornton loosed his pistol and drew back into the lee of the square stone chimney where he remained safe from discovery until the other had passed into the stable and begun to ungirth his saddle. The house stood remote from any neighbouring habitation, and the road at its front was an infrequently used sledge trail. The stable was at its side, while back of the buildings themselves, angling off behind the screening shoulder of a steep spur of hillside, stretched a small orchard where only gnarled apple trees and a few "bee-gums" broke a small and level amphitheatre into which the possible passerby could not see. The lord of this manor stood bent, his fingers wrestling with the stubbornness of a rusted buckle, when he heard at his back, low of tone but startlingly staccato in its quality of imperativeness, the single syllable, "Bas!" Rowlett wheeled, leaping back with a hand sweeping instinctively to his holster--but he arrested that belligerent gesture with a sudden paralysis of caution because of the look in the eyes of the surprise visitor who stood poised with forward-bending readiness of body, and a revolver levelled in a hand of bronze steadiness.