“It would be murder, John!  I’ll go with you if you’ll start now!”

“No,” he said quietly, “I won’t run.  Besides it is impossible for him to take you from me.”

“Impossible?” she asked.  “What do you mean?”

“When the time comes you’ll see!  Now he’s nearly there—­watch!”

The rider was in full view now, driving his horse at a stretching gallop.  There was no doubt about the identity of the man.  They could not make out his face, of course, at that distance, but something in the careless dash of his seat in the saddle, something about the slender, erect body cried out almost in words that this was Ronicky Doone.  A moment later the first treetops of the grove brushed across him, and he was lost from view.

The girl buried her face in her hands, then she looked up.  By this time he must have reached Lefty, and yet there was no sound of shooting.  Had Lefty found discretion the better part of valor and let him go by unhindered?  But, in that case, the swift gallop of the horse would have borne the rider through the grove by this time.

“What’s happened?” she asked of John Mark.  “What can have happened down there?”

“A very simple story,” said Mark.  “Lefty, as I feared, has been more chivalrous than wise.  He has stepped out into the road and ordered Ronicky to stop, and Ronicky has stopped.  Now he is sitting in his saddle, looking down to Lefty, and they are holding a parley—­very like two knights of the old days, exchanging compliments before they try to cut each other’s throats.”

But, even as he spoke, there was the sound of a gun exploding, and then a silence.

“One shot—­one revolver shot,” said John Mark in his deadly calm voice.  “It is as I said.  They drew at a signal, and one of them proved far the faster.  It was a dead shot, for only one was needed to end the battle.  One of them is standing, the other lies dead under the shadow of that grove, my dear.  Which is it?”

“Which is it?” asked the girl in a whisper.  Then she threw up her hands with a joyous cry:  “Ronicky Doone!  Ronicky, Ronicky Doone!”

A horseman was breaking into view through the grove, and now he rode out into full view below them—­unmistakably Ronicky Doone!  Even at that distance he heard the cry, and, throwing up his hand with a shout that tingled faintly up to them, he spurred straight up the slope toward them.  Ruth Tolliver started forward, but a hand closed over her wrist with a biting grip and brought her to a sudden halt.  She turned to find John Mark, an automatic hanging loosely in his other hand.

His calm had gone, and in his dead-white face the eyes were rolling and gleaming, and his set lips trembled.  “You were right,” he said, “I cannot face him.  Not that I fear death, but there would be a thousand damnations in it if I died knowing that he would have you after my eyes were closed.  I told you he could not take you—­not living, my dear.  Dead he may have us both.”