“What is your object, now, in wishin’ to spake to her?” asked the latter, looking him sternly in the face.

“I don’t exactly see that I’m bound to answer your catechism,” said Dick; “it is to Miss Sullivan I would address myself.  I speak to you, Miss Sullivan; and, allow me to say, that I feel a very warm interest in your welfare, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to promote it by any means in my power.”

Mave was about to reply, but Dalton anticipated her.

“The only favor you can bestow upon Miss Sullivan, as you are plaised to call her, is to pass her by,” said Dalton; “she wishes to have no intimacy nor conversation of any kind with such a noted profligate.  She knows your carrechter, Mr. Henderson; or if she doesn’t, I do—­an’ that it’s as much as a daicent girl’s good name is worth to be seen spakin’ to you.  Now, I tell you again to pass on.  Don’t force either yourself or your conversation upon her, if you’re wise.  I’m here to protect her—­an’ I won’t see her insulted for nothing.”

“Do you mean that as a threat, my good fellow?”

“If you think it a threat, don’t deserve it, an’ you won’t get it.  If right was to take place, our family would have a heavy account to settle with you and yours; and it wouldn’t be wise in you to add this to it.”

“Ha!  I see—­oh, I understand you, I think—­more threatening—­eh?”

“As I said before,” replied Dalton, “that’s as you may deserve it.  Your cruelty, and injustice, and oppression to our family, we might overlook; but I tell you, that if you become the means of bringin’ a stain—­the slightest that ever was breathed—­upon the fair name of this girl, it would be a thousand times betther that you never were born.”

“Ah! indeed, Master Dalton! but in the mean time, what does Miss Sullivan herself say?  We are anxious to hear your own sentiments on this matter, Miss Sullivan.”

“I would feel obliged to you to pass on, sir,” she replied; “Condy Dalton is ill, and badly able to bear sich a conversation as this.”

“Here,” said Dalton, fiercely, laying his hand upon Mave’s shoulder, “if you cross my path here—­or lave but a shadow of a stain, as I said, upon her name, woe betide you!”

“Your wishes are commands to me, Miss Sullivan,” replied Henderson, without noticing Dalton’s denunciation in the slightest degree; “and, I trust that when we meet again, you won’t be guarded by such a terrible bow-wow of a dragon as has now charge of you.  Good bye! and accept my best wishes until then.”

He immediately set spurs once more to his horse, and in a few minutes had turned at the cross roads, and taken that which led to his father’s house.

“It was well for him,” said Dalton, immediately after he had left them, “that I hadn’t a loaded pistol in my hand—­but no, dear Mave,” he added, checking himself, “the hasty temper and the hasty blow is the fault of our family, an’ so far as I am consarned, I’ll do everything to overcome it.”