and this she did not attempt to deny, because she could not; but as for their tryst at the well, she felt satisfied, from her knowledge of his jealous and violent character, that if he had been aware of it, it would not have been by seeking the fact through the medium of his threats and her fears that he would have proceeded.  Had he seen Woodward, for instance, and herself holding a secret meeting in such a place and at such an hour, she concluded justly that the middogue or dagger, for the use of which he had been already so celebrated, would have been brought into requisition against either one or both.

“I’ll talk no more to you,” she replied, with a flushed face; “for even if I tould you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.  I did meet him, then; are you satisfied now?”

This admission was an able stroke of policy on her part, as the reader will soon perceive.

“O,” he exclaimed, with a bitter, or, rather, a furious expression of face, “dar manim, if you had, you wouldn’t dare to confess as much.  But listen to me; if I ever hear or know, to my own satisfaction, that you meet him, or keep his company, or put yourself in his power, I’ll send six inches of this “—­and he pulled out the glittering weapon—­“into your heart and his; so now be warned and avoid him, and don’t bring down my vengeance on you both.”

“I don’t see what right you have to bring me over the coals about any one.  My father was forcin’ me to marry you; but I now tell you to your teeth, that I never had the slightest intention of it.  No!  I wouldn’t take the wealth of the barony, and be the wife of sich a savage murdherer.  No man wid blood upon his hands and upon his sowl, as you have—­a public robber, a murdherer, an outlaw—­will ever be my husband.  What right have you to tell me who I’m to spake to, or who I’m not to spake to?”

“Ah,” he replied, “that wasn’t your language to me not long ago.”

“But you were a different boy then from what you are now.  If you had kept your name free from disgrace and blood, I might have loved you; but I cannot love a man with such crimes to answer for as you have.”

“You accuse me of shedding blood,” he replied; “that is false.  I have never shed blood nor taken life; but, on the contrary, did all in my power to prevent those who have placed me at their head from doin’ so.  Yet, when they did it in my absence, and against my orders, the blame and guilt is charged upon me because I am their leader.  As for anything else I have done, I do not look upon it as a crime; let it rest upon the oppression that drove me and others to the wild lives we lead.  We are forced to live now the best way we can, and that you know; but as to this gentleman, you mustn’t spake to him at any rate,” he proceeded; “why should you?  What ’ud make a man so high in life, and so far above you as he is, strive to become acquainted with you, unless to bring about your ruin to gratify his own bad passions?  Think