But as the second passed he seemed no longer able to see her plainly. His eyes were misted and blurred, but they were empty of tears as Linda's own. Rather the focal points of his brain had become seared by a mounting flame within himself. The glow of the fire had seemingly spread until it encompassed the whole wilderness world. "What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering. She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood atonement," she said between back-drawn lips. X When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It broke from her in a flood. She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you understand?" she cried. "You--you--you are Folger's son. You are the boy that crept out--under this very tree--to find him dead. All my life Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?" Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he seemed dazed. "Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do." "You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a rifle barrel? Are you a coward--and a weakling; one of your mother's blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a mountain man--that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality away from you! Haven't you any answer?" He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean--killing?" "What else? To kill--never to stop killing--one after another until they are gone! Till Simon Turner and the whole Turner clan have paid the debts they owe." Bruce recoiled as if from a blow. "Turner? Did you say Turner?" he asked hoarsely. "Yes. That's the clan's name. I thought you knew." There was an instant of strange truce. Both stood motionless. The scene no longer seemed part of the world that men have come to know in these latter years,--a land of cities and homes and peaceful twilights over quiet countrysides. The moon was still strange and white in the sky; the pines stood tall and dark and sad,--eternal emblems of the wilderness. The fire had burned down to a few lurid coals glowing in the gray ashes. No longer were these two children of civilization. Their passion had swept them back into the immeasurable past; they were simply human beings deep in the simplest of human passions. They trembled all over with it.