Helpless, she turned in sickening doubt, to feel that her limbs were limp in the agony of fear. She heard the thunder of the man-eating stallion's hoofs just behind her and she butted blindly, as she sank down, into some one who held bravely her hand as she fell, and the next instant she heard a thundering report and smelt a foul blast of gunpowder. She looked up in time to see the great horse pitch back on his haunches, rear, quiver a moment and strike desperately at the air with his front feet and fall almost upon her. When she revived, the stable boy stood near by the dead stallion, pale with fright and wonder. A half-grown boy stood by her, holding her hand. "You are all right now," he said quietly as he helped her to arise. In his right hand he held a pistol and the foul smoke still oozed up from the nipple where the exploded cap lay shattered, under the hammer. He was perfectly cool--even haughtily so. He scarcely looked at Helen nor at Jim, who kept saying nervously: "You've killed him--you've killed him--what will Mr. Travis say?" The boy laughed an ironical laugh. Then he walked up and examined the shot he had made. Squarely between the great eyes the ball had gone, and scarcely had the glaring, frenzied eye-balls of the man-eater been fixed in the rigid stare of death. He put his fingers on it, and turning, said: "A good shot, running--and at twenty paces!" Then he stood up proudly, and his blue eyes flashed defiance as he said: "And what will Mr. Travis say? Well, tell him first of all that this man-eating stallion of his caught the bullet I had intended for his woman-eating master--this being my birth-day. And tell him, if he asks you who I am, that last week I was James Adams, but now I am James Travis. He will understand." He came over to Helen gallantly--his blue eyes shining through a smile which now lurked in them: "This is Miss Conway, isn't it? I will see you out of this." Then, taking her hand as if she had been his big sister, he led her along the path to the road and to safety. CHAPTER X MARRIED IN GOD'S SIGHT Night--for night and death, are they not one? A farm cabin in a little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing its cheerful light on a room rough from puncheon floor to axe-hewn rafters, but cleanly-tidy in its very roughness. It looked sinewy, strong, honest, good-natured. There was roughness, but it was the roughness of strength. Knots of character told of the suffering, struggles and privations of the sturdy trees in the forest, of seams twisted by the tempests; rifts from the mountain rocks; fibre, steel-chilled by the terrible, silent cold of winter stars. And now plank and beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of the hearth-stone.