“Let me go, Mr. Wickersham,” she said imperiously.  But he held her firmly.

At that moment she heard an oath behind her, and a voice exclaimed: 

“It is you, at last!  And still troubling women!”

Wickersham’s countenance suddenly changed.  He released her wrist and fell back a step, his face blanching.  The next second, as she turned quickly, old Adam Rawson’s bulky figure was before her.  He was hurrying toward her:  the very apotheosis of wrath.  His face was purple; his eyes blazed; his massive form was erect, and quivering with fury.  His heavy stick was gripped in his left hand, and with the other he was drawing a pistol from his pocket.

“I have waited for you, you dog, and you have come at last!” he cried.

Wickersham, falling back before his advance, was trying, as Lois looked, to get out a pistol.  His face was as white as death.  Lois had no time for thought.  It was simply instinct.  Old Rawson’s pistol was already levelled.  With a cry she threw herself between them; but it was too late.

She was only conscious of a roar and blinding smoke in her eyes and of something like a hot iron at her side; then, as she sank down, of Squire Rawson’s stepping over her.  Her sacrifice was in vain, for the old man was not to be turned from his revenge.  As he had sworn, so he performed.  And the next moment Wickersham, with two bullets in his body, had paid to him his long-piled-up debt.

When Lois came to, she was in bed, and Dr. Balsam was leaning over her with a white, set face.

“I am all right,” she said, with a faint smile.  “Was he hurt?”

“Don’t talk now,” said the Doctor, quietly.  “Thank God, you are not hurt much.”

Keith was sitting in his office in New Leeds alone that afternoon.  He had just received a telegram from Dave Dennison that Wickersham had left New York.  Dennison had learned that he was going to Ridgely to try to make up with old Rawson.  Just then the paper from Ridgely was brought in.  Keith’s eye fell on the head-lines of the first column, and he almost fell from his chair as he read the words: 

     DOUBLE TRAGEDY—­FATAL SHOOTING

     F.C.  WICKERSHAM SHOOTS MISS LOIS HUNTINGTON AND IS KILLED BY
     SQUIRE RAWSON

The account of the shooting was in accordance with the heading, and was followed by the story of the Wickersham-Rawson trouble.

Keith snatched out his watch, and the next second was dashing down the street on his way to the station.  A train was to start for the east in five minutes.  He caught it as it ran out of the station, and swung himself up to the rear platform.

Curiously enough, in his confused thoughts of Lois Huntington and what she had meant to him was mingled the constant recollection of old Tim Gilsey and his lumbering stage running through the pass.