"O Millicent, Millicent! could he not have spared you? We could have loved each other so truly! Poor child, poor child! What fiend was he to have betrayed you! But now it can never be, never, never, never!" The words rang out drearily, the death-knell of all that had made life beautiful to them both. The pale girl sat motionless, speechless, her eyes dark with horror, her hands nerveless in his passionate grasp. Tears fell upon those white fingers which he had so often kissed,--cruel tears wrung from the bruised heart of the man she loved; tears that she had no power to check, tears that had their source in her own sin. In that hour of agony, if remorse may in aught atone for error, Millicent must have been forgiven of the angels. The proud man knew how to suffer, but he could not forgive. He arose and dashed the tears from his eyes; they had cost him mortal pain. The rain was over, the gray sky had cleared; and Millicent, like a gray shadow, slipped from the tower, leaving her lover alone, with the mocking sunlight shining on his dark, tear-stained face. CHAPTER XVII. "Our bread was such as captives’ tears Have moistened many a thousand years, Since man first pent his brother men Like brutes within an iron den." It was a long chase that brought Hal Deering and Maurice Galbraith face to face with the ruffian, whom Hal readily identified. They found him with a group of new-found friends in the chief liquor saloon of a small, rather disreputable town, fifty miles from the Ranch. When the two young men entered the place, the man they were looking for asked them to join in the "all-round drink" he was about to "stand treat for," which invitation was promptly declined by Hal Deering. After a whispered word, Galbraith had left the shop; and Hal, seating himself at a table, awaited the return of his friend, quietly enduring the insulting remarks which the offended Horton heaped upon him. The loafers in the shop had a kindly feeling toward the man who had treated them, and did not discourage him in his attempts to force the new-comer into a quarrel. But Hal was imperturbable, and answered neither with look nor word. Stimulated by the whiskey he had imbibed, and the admiring attention of his friends, the rowdy finally called out in a brutal voice,-- "If you think yerself too good to drink with this yere crowd, p’raps yer would n’t mind amusing ’em by showing ’em the last style of dancing down in ’Frisco. ’T would raley please us to see you step out." As he spoke he drew his pistol from his belt and pointed it at Deering. The more sober ones of the party here interfered; and the burly saloon-keeper stepped forward with the remark, that he "did n’t mean to ’low anything but fair play in his shanty; and that if the genl’m’n had a difference between them they must settle it outside."