"You must risk nothing for me," he rejoined. "I see, Barbara, you are what you always were--the salt of the earth! I deserve of you that you should shut your door on me now--that when they come this way after me you should send them on my trail. But--you won't do it?" "No," she replied, slowly. "I will not do it." He leant forward, resting his arm on the table, and looked at her. The oil-lamp that stood between them shed a circle of light in which he saw her face, unshrinking, steadfast, wrought up to high resolve. "You were always too good for me, Barbara," he said. "Are you such an angel as to have forgiven me?" "What has that to do with it?" she rejoined, coldly. "Enough that if I can help you now, I will." She was looking at him as intently as he at her. She saw how changed was the face of the idol of her girlhood--poor shattered idol with the feet of clay--base metal she had taken for pure gold! It was not only that he was older--he had aged more than she--but a subtler change had passed over him; he was hardened, embittered, coarsened, undefinably deteriorated. She saw the colour mount in his haggard cheek at her calm words. "Coals of fire," he said, with a touch of bitter mockery that disguised pain. "Well, if it's a comfort to you to know it, Barbara, _they burn_." "Which way are they most likely to come?" she asked, putting personal questions determinedly aside. "They'd probably skirt the wood; but yet there's no knowing but what they might make their way down the gulch and round by the creek yonder." "Whichever way you go," she said, in deep consideration, "you might run right into the jaws of danger. And if they found you with another horse, and that horse discovered not to be yours, it might be worse for you--if they refused to believe it had been freely lent to you." "They'd not be likely to waste much time on inquiries," he observed, drily. "It's not their way to make allowance for priest or prayer. Perhaps I had better lie low for a time until the heat of the chase is over. Who is here with you, Barbara?" "No one to-day. My brother and his wife are out until to-morrow." "You are alone?" he said, with a softening of tender respect in his tone. "Forgive my intrusion. You must not risk the least trouble for me. I'll feel like a king after this rest and refreshment here, and be ready to go on my way." They were still discussing the best course to be adopted when a faint sound in the distance struck on their ears--a sound so faint and far that, had it not been for the wonderful clearness and stillness of the dry, crisp, dewless air, it could not have reached them. "Hark! What is that?" said Desmond, holding his breath.