"If it's on account of your own future, if you're trampling down a place in the briars to make your bed, as pa called it, then I think you can find a nicer place to camp than Ascalon. It never will repay the peril you'll run and the blood you'll lose--have lost already." "I'm further out of the calculation than anybody, Miss Thayer." "I don't see what other motive there can be, then," she reflected, eyes bent to the ground as she walked slowly by his side. "A lady asked me to undertake it. I'm doing it for her," he replied. "She was a thoughtless, selfish person!" Rhetta said, her deep feeling stressed in the flush of her face, her accusation as vehement as if she laid charges against another. "Last night she thought it over; she had time to realize the danger she'd asked a generous stranger to assume. She wants to withdraw the request today--she asks you to give it up and let Ascalon go on its wicked way." "Tell her," said he gently, holding her pleading, pained eyes a moment with his assuring gaze, "that a man can't drop a piece of work like this and turn his back on it and walk away. They'd say in Ascalon that he was a coward, and they'd be telling the truth." "Oh! I oughtn't have argued you into it!" she regretted, bitter in her self-blame. "But the thought of that terrible, cruel man, of all he's killed, all he will kill if he comes back--made a selfish coward of me. We had gone through a week of terror--you can't understand a woman's terror of that kind of men, storming the streets at night uncurbed!" "A man can only guess." "I was so grateful to you for driving them away from here, for purifying the air after them like a rain, that I urged you to go ahead and finish the job, just as if we were conferring a great favor! I didn't think at the time, but I've thought it all over since." "You mustn't worry about it any more. It is a great favor, a great honor, to be asked to serve you at all." "You're too generous, Mr. Morgan. There are only a few of us here who care about order and peace--you can see that for yourself this morning--no matter what assurance they gave you yesterday. Let it go. If you don't want to get your horse and ride away, you can at least resign. You've got justification enough for that, you've seen the men that promised to support you yesterday turn their backs on you when you came up the street today. They don't want the town shut up, they don't want it changed--not when it hits their pocketbooks. You can tell pa that, and resign--or I'll tell him--it was my fault, I got you into it." "You couldn't expect me to do that--you don't expect it," he chided, his voice grave and low. "I can want you to do it--I don't expect it." "Of course not. We'll not talk about it any more." They continued toward her father's office in silence, crossing the stretch of barren in which the little catalpa tree stood. Rhetta looked up into his face.