Jane walked down into the outer court and approached the sorrel.  Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.

“Wrangle—­dear old Wrangle,” she said, and put a caressing hand on his matted mane.  “Oh, he’s wild, but he knows me!  Bern, can he run as fast as ever?”

“Run?  Jane, he’s done sixty miles since last night at dark, and I could make him kill Black Star right now in a ten-mile race.”

“He never could,” protested Jane.  “He couldn’t even if he was fresh.”

“I reckon mebbe the best hoss’ll prove himself yet,” said Lassiter, “an’, Jane, if it ever comes to that race I’d like you to be on Wrangle.”

“I’d like that, too,” rejoined Venters.  “But, Jane, maybe Lassiter’s hint is extreme.  Bad as your prospects are, you’ll surely never come to the running point.”

“Who knows!” she replied, with mournful smile.

“No, no, Jane, it can’t be so bad as all that.  Soon as I see Tull there’ll be a change in your fortunes.  I’ll hurry down to the village....Now don’t worry.”

Jane retired to the seclusion of her room.  Lassiter’s subtle forecasting of disaster, Venters’s forced optimism, neither remained in mind.  Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining.  She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches.  She thought of Venters’s friendship.  She had not lost that, but she had lost him.  Lassiter’s friendship—­that was more than love—­it would endure, but soon he, too, would be gone.  Little Fay slept dreamlessly upon the bed, her golden curls streaming over the pillow.  Jane had the child’s worship.  Would she lose that, too?  And if she did, what then would be left?  Conscience thundered at her that there was left her religion.  Conscience thundered that she should be grateful on her knees for this baptism of fire; that through misfortune, sacrifice, and suffering her soul might be fused pure gold.  But the old, spontaneous, rapturous spirit no more exalted her.  She wanted to be a woman—­not a martyr.  Like the saint of old who mortified his flesh, Jane Withersteen had in her the temper for heroic martyrdom, if by sacrificing herself she could save the souls of others.  But here the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself the blacker grew the souls of her churchmen.  There was something terribly wrong with her soul, something terribly wrong with her churchmen and her religion.  In the whirling gulf of her thought there was yet one shining light to guide her, to sustain her in her hope; and it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and her blindness, she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and supreme justice.  That was love.  “Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine word, entirely free from any church or creed.

Jane’s meditations were disturbed by Lassiter’s soft, tinkling step in the court.  Always he wore the clinking spurs.  Always he was in readiness to ride.  She passed out and called him into the huge, dim hall.