“Well, I wouldn’t want to live if I were you.”

“Just a little longer, knowing that she cares for me.  I’ve never been free to have the love of a woman the way you will some day, though I’ve hungered and sickened for it—­for a woman who would understand and be close.  But this girl has been the soul of it some way.  See here, Follett, let her stay this summer, or until I’m dead.  That can’t be a long time.  I’ve felt the end coming for a year now.  Let her stay, believing in me.  Let me know to the last that I’m the only man who has been in her heart, who has won her confidence and her love.  Oh, I mean fair.  You stay with us yourself and watch.  Come—­but look there, look, man!”

“Well,—­what?”

“That candle is going out,—­we’ll be in the dark”—­he grasped the other’s arm—­“in the dark, and now I’m afraid again.  Don’t leave me here!  It would be an awful death to die.  Here’s that thing now on the bed behind me.  It’s trying to get around in front where I’ll have to see it—­get another candle.  No—­don’t leave me,—­this one will go out while you’re gone.”  All his strength went into the grip on Follett’s arm.  The candle was sputtering in its pool of grease.

“There, it’s gone—­now don’t, don’t leave me.  It’s trying to crawl over me—­I smell the blood—­”

“Well—­lie down there—­it serves you right.  There—­stop it—­I’ll stay with you.”

Until dawn Follett sat by the bunk, submitting his arm to the other’s frenzied grip.  From time to time he somewhat awkwardly uttered little words that were meant to be soothing, as he would have done to a frightened child.

When morning brought the gray light into the little room, the haunted man fell into a doze, and Follett, gently unclasping the hands from his arm, arose and went softly out.  He was cramped from sitting still so long, and chilled, and his arm hurt where the other had gripped it.  He pulled back the blue woollen sleeve and saw above his wrist livid marks where the nails had sunk into his flesh.

Then out of the room back of him came a sharp cry, as from one who had awakened from a dream of terror.  He stepped to the door again and looked in.

“There now—­don’t be scared any more.  The daylight has come; it’s all right—­all right—­go to sleep now—­”

He stood listening until the man he had come to kill was again quiet.  Then he went outside and over to the creek back of the willows to bathe in the fresh running water.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Ruel Follett’s Way of Business

By the time the women were stirring that morning, Follett galloped up on his horse.  Prudence saw him from the doorway as he turned in from the main road, sitting his saddle with apparent carelessness, his arms loose from the shoulders, shifting lightly with the horse’s motion, as one who had made the center of gravity his slave.  It was a style of riding that would have made a scandal in any riding-school; but it seemed to be well calculated for the quick halts, sudden swerves, and acute angles affected by the yearling steer in his moments of excitement.