“All right, all safe, tell the lady,” cried a clear, exulting voice from below:  “here’s sweet little Miss Nellie, without a scratch on her.”

It was Lester’s shout from the yard, and it rang through all the building.

“Do you hear, Ruth? do you hear?” I screamed, beside myself with joy and thankfulness.  “He has saved your husband a dozen times, that hero, and now he brings back your child to you.  Oh, what a noble fellow! how I envy him his feelings!”

He was in the room by this time with Nellie in his arms:  he heard me and gave me just one look.  I never saw him again, but I never shall forget it, for it revealed the long agony of a blighted life that moment struggling into hope again through expiation.  He did not wait for Ruth’s broken cry of gratitude, but was gone as soon as the child was in her arms.

“Come, boys,” I heard him cry cheerily outside, “lend a hand to help the governor to his room:  he’s got a scratch or two, and the doctor’s coming to dress them.  He will be all right again before we can get things set straight round here.”

Governor Denham’s wounds were not so slight as Lester hoped, but they were not dangerous, and when, to prevent my aunt’s alarm for my safety (for the news of “the break” spread rapidly through the town), I parted from my friends before nightfall and rode back to the hotel as I had come, I left three of the most excitedly grateful and happy people behind me I had ever seen.

“I suppose it is no use to urge it further, Ruth darling,” said her husband as we parted, “but I really wish you would go to San Francisco with our friend and let Nellie have a chance to forget the shock she has endured.  You need the change too, if you would ever think of yourself.”

“It is because I do think of myself that I prefer to remain where I am happiest,” said Ruth decidedly.  “As for Nell, she is a pioneer child, and will soon be as merry and fearless as ever.  But, Jenny dear, we owe you an apology for the novel dinner-party we have given you.  When you come back it will seem like a frightful dream, and not a reality, we shall all be so quiet and orderly again.”  As we stood alone in the hall, from which every sign of the late terrible conflict had been removed save the bloodstains that had sunk into the stone beyond the power of a hasty washing to obliterate, Ruth said in a low whispering tone that was full of pent-up feeling, “I told you that Lester was a murderer condemned for life, Jenny, but there were extenuating circumstances in connection with his crime.  That is not his name we call him by:  I do not even know his real one, but I am convinced that he belongs to educated and reputable people, and that he suffers the keenest remorse for the wild life that led him so terribly astray.  He became desperately attached to a Spanish girl, who was married as a child to a brutal fellow who deserted her, and she thought him dead.  She and Lester were to be married, I believe,