He saw Richard Travis coming, slowly, painfully, his left arm tied up, and his step, once so quick and active, so full of strength and life, now was as if the blight of old age had come upon it. In spite of his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change, and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and the maddening fury of murder,--instinct, the ever present--whispered its warning to his innermost ear. Still, he could not resist. Rising, he threw his pistol up within a few yards of Richard Travis's breast, his hand upon the trigger. But he could not fire, although Travis stood quietly under its muzzle and looked without surprise into his face. Conway glanced along the barrel of his weapon and into the face of Richard Travis. And then he brought his pistol down with a quick movement. The face before him was begging him to shoot! "Why don't you shoot?" said Travis at last, breaking the silence and in a tone of disappointment. "Because you are not guilty," said Conway--"not with that look in your face." "I am sorry you saw my face, then," he smiled sadly--"for it had been such a happy solution for it all--if you had only fired." "Where is my child?" "Do you think you have any right to ask--having treated her as you have?" Conway trembled, at first with rage, then in shame: "No,"--he said finally. "No, you are right--I haven't." "That is the only reply you could have made me that would make it obligatory on my part to answer your question. In that reply I see there is hope for you. So I will tell you she is safe, unharmed, unhurt." "I felt it," said Conway, quietly, "for I knew it, Richard Travis, as soon as I saw your face. But tell me all." "There is little to tell. I had made up my mind to run off with her, marry her, perhaps, since she had neither home nor a father, and was a beautiful young thing which any man might be proud of. But things have come up--no, not come up, fallen, fallen and crushed. It has been a crisis all around--so I sent for Clay--a fine young fellow and he loves her--I had him meet me here and--well, he has taken her to Westmoreland to-night. You know she is safe there. She will come to you to-morrow as pure as she left, though God knows you do not deserve it." Something sprang into Edward Conway's throat--something kin to a joyous shout. He could not speak. He could only look at the strange, calm, sad man before him in a gratitude that uplifted him. He stared with eyes that were blinded with tears. "Dick--Dick," he said, "we have been estranged, since the war. I misjudged you. I see I never knew you. I came to kill, but here--" He thrust the grip of his pistol toward Travis--"here, Dick, kill me--shoot me--I am not fit to live--but, O God, how clearly I see now; and, Dick--Dick--you shall see--the world shall see that from now on, with God's help, as Lily makes me say--Dick, I'll be a Conway again."