Part 11 (1/2)

”I ain't no stranger, an, in a voice which was a curious blend of his ordinary harsh tones with a soft and quivering syers to you,she would move or speak; but only the sound of a choked sob came to him, and he shi+vered It was the lanced into the silent rooe 100_]

”Cold-blood Slaughter they calls me,man; but it's only a name, miss I've come here now, miss--_here_--to tell you, first froers, h”

Again he paused, looking up ti as the girl's e; he saw that, and beyond it, just over it, the still, white features of the dead ain

”Maybe my story'll help you, miss, for no one's ever heard it yet I could only tell it--to you, and--here--now They didn't call hter once; I was a soft chap then, and I loved a woman who loved hter then It was all a lie--God forgive the teller, for I can't--but the woman I loved believed it, and I went away--came here and took up the Three-mile, and kept it to myself, till--till _she_ came here--she--the woman I loved--and she ca hard in spite of the quiver that was in it; but the quiver was due to another emotion than that which had caused it at first, and he, realizing it, checked his utterance till the growing anger was subdued

”She saw ain I kept away Then she died, hter, just like her, rew, and then--then--the father died I thought he never knew till he--told me--told ood to her daughter, for her sake, and--and--I've come”

He ceased, but did not dare to look up, lest he should meet her eyes as she raised her head to answer hi back on his heels with his back straight, his arrey felt hat His head was leaning forward, and two tears ran down his sunburned cheeks to the tangled thickness of his grizzled beard In the room no sound broke the stillness

”I never knew till to-day she'd found it was a lie--I never knew she'd turned away because she was--she'd found out it wasn't true; and I've been a hard man all the tiht, just tidy up a bit I's sers now, and we'll do the best we can”

It was all he had to tell, all he could say; but it seeirl neither spoke nor n that she heard and understood, and receiving none, looked up She was kneeling as she had been when first he caure on the bed He reached out his hand and touched her arm

”Miss,” he said, as he touched her; but there was neither sound nor movement in response ”Miss,” he repeated, as he put his hand round her arm lest his touch had not been apparent to her, ”we're none of us strangers, leastways----”

The grip on her arht unconsciously have pushed her; but as he began to repeat again the forh the mists of his sorrow and perplexity, Ailleenposition as she slipped, pale and insensible, to the floor

For ato his feet, and rushed, wild-eyed and panic-stricken, out of the room, across the verandah, and down the pathway to the road The news of Godson's death having spread through the townshi+p, alathered round the gate Mar he experienced since Slaughter had, as he thought, co sent for too late, had kept thee to proffer their help--a restraint the women hter appeared, running bareheaded down the pathway, they turned towards hie, andthey could not understand The wo in a dead faint on the floor, carried her between them into her own room While they revived her, others of the co responsibilities, for tropical heat leaves brief tihter, left to himself, loosened his horse from where so slowly, down the townshi+p road and away in the direction of the Three-mile He walked on, with the reins loosely looped over his shoulder, the horse, as though it knew hisits head just level with him The warht the dust as it rose fro cloud, all around and over theain as it felt the irritation in its nostrils, and blinked its eyes, until they were alhter walked on oblivious to the dust, to the heat, to the ti consciousness of a dull oad him into a state of mind very different to that which had held hi his sympathy to Ailleen The years of bitter solitude, the years of cynical brooding over the wrongs that had come into his life, had built up an influence over him that was not to be dissipated by a momentary wave of sympathetic impulse More than that, the sympathetic impulse had not been allowed to expend itself; as it developed it had been checked by the apparent unresponsiveness of its object, until, at the reatest vitality, it was abruptly arrested by the shock of Ailleen's collapse And in that it was in keeping with all the other experiences Slaughter had knohenever the softer side of his nature, the love i, were called into activity; always there had been a check put upon him which made the exercise restrained and restricted up to the time when a final shock had effectually arrested it, and turned his love and kindliness back, turned them away from their natural outlet to force the tur resulted

Over the whole distance between the school-house and the solitary Three- and bitter The action of the woman who turned fro, caht than it hen he spoke of it to Ailleen Then he said she turned away because she had learned she had wronged hi her action to fear and shaain and again, that the e she had sent on her deathbed

Disjointedly and incoherently, but always bitterly, he brooded and piled item on item, until there came to him the memory of the other, the memory of the woman who had first set his life awry

A few kind sentences; a touch of huenerous open-heartedness at that ht have forgotten in the warlooive the necessary trend to the direction of his thoughts and e came to him save the recollection of the one whose jealous fancy had let loose all the hard cruelty of his nature; and Slaughter finished his ith his ainst the ht his ruin

He turned his horse into the paddock, force of habit i him to re hi that he did so With the bridle on his arm, and the saddle under it, he walked to the hut and kicked the door open On the threshold he stopped Two h table in the middle of the room, and, as the door opened, the man with his back to the doorway turned in his seat and rose to his feet

The saddle fell frohter's arm, unnoticed; the presence of the second hter stand and stare at the man who faced him--a man with a brutal head and black, heavy brows

”You don't see of a snarl in his voice

”You!” Slaughter exclaimed

”Yes, me; and why not?” replied the other, quickly and hotly

”There's nothing between you and hter said slowly

”Is that so?” the ht that the work Kate Blair had done was enough to hter started at the nah his face went hard and his hands clenched, and his eyes gleahter than they did when he faced Marmot a few hours earlier