As two men backed through the gorge into darkness, out of which only one had come, a murder party, disarmed and mortified, shambled to its respective feet and busied itself with a figure that lay insensible with its head among the scattered embers. "George," said Turner a half hour later, "ye come ter me when I needed ye right bad--but hit's mighty unfortunate thet ye hed ter do hit jest thet way. Ye're ther only man I've got whose name is beknownst ter Kinnard Towers--an' next ter me, thar won't be a man in ther hills harder dogged. Ye hain't been married long--an' ye dastn't go home now." George Kelly shook his head. "I'm in hit now up ter my neck--an' thar hain't no goin' back. Afore they hes ther chanst ter stop me though, I'm goin' by home ter see my woman, an' bid her fare over ter her folks in Virginny." CHAPTER XXIII Bear Cat Stacy had gone with George Kelly to the house where his wife was awaiting him that night, and though he had remained outside while the husband went in, it was not hard to guess something of what took place. The wife of only a few months came out a little later with eyes that were still wet with tears, and with what things she was going to take away with her, wrapped in a shawl. She stood by as George Kelly nailed slats across the door. Already she had put out the fire on the hearth, and about her ankles a lean cat stropped its arched back. Bear Cat had averted his face, but he heard the spasmodic sob of her farewell and the strange unmanning rattle in the husband's throat. It was a new house, of four-squared logs, recently raised by the kindly hands of neighbors, amid much merry-making and well-wishing and it had been their first home together. Now it was no longer a place where they could live. For the man it would henceforth be a trap of death, and the wife could not remain there alone. It stood on ground bought from Kinnard Towers--and not yet paid for. Kelly and his wife paused by the log foot-bridge which spanned the creek at their yard fence. In the gray cheerlessness, before dawn, the house with its stark chimney was only a patch of heavier shadow against ghostly darkness. They looked back on it, with wordless regret, and then a mile further on the path forked, and the woman clutched wildly at her husband's shoulders before she took one way and he the other. "Be heedful of yoreself, George," was all she said, and the man answered with a miserable nod. So Kelly became Turner's companion in hiding, denied the comfort of a definite roof, and depending upon that power of concealment which could only exist in a forest-masked land, heaped into a gigantic clutter of cliffs and honey-combed with natural retreats. But two days after his wife's departure, he was drawn to the place that had been his home by an impulse that outweighed danger, and looked down as furtively as some skulking fox from the tangled elevation at its back.