a heart.  Do you know what occurred last night?  As good an old gentleman as ever lived was brutally felled to the earth and killed; a poor man who was never worse than a drunkard has become a murderer, and there’s a many good pious ladies in this town who’ll go about till death’s day jeered at as fools.  Would you like to be marked for a fool?  No, you wouldn’t and neither will they; and if you’re the young lady I take you for, you could have hindered all this, and you didn’t. I brought the old man to this place; I am to blame in that, my own self, I am; but I tell you, by the salvation of my soul, when I stood last night and heard him pray, and saw those poor ladies with their white garbs all bedraggled, around him praying, I said to myself, ’Cyril, you’ve reason to call on the rocks and hills to cover you,’ and I had grace to be right down sorry.  I’m right down ashamed, and so I’m going to pull up stakes and go back to where I came from; and I’ve come here now to tell you that after what I’ve seen of you in this matter I’d sooner die than be hitched with you.  You’ve no more heart than my old shoe; as long as you get on it’s all one to you who goes to the devil.  You’re not only as sharp as I took you for, but a good deal sharper.  Go ahead; you’ll get rich somehow; you’ll get grand; but I want you to know that, though I’m pretty tricky myself, and ’cute enough to have thought of a good thing and followed it up pretty far, I’ve got a heart; and I do despise a person made of stone.  I was real fond of you, for you far exceeded my expectations; but I’m not fond of you now one bit.  If you was to go down on your bended knees and ask me to admire you now, I wouldn’t.”

She listened to all the sentence he pronounced upon her.  When he had finished she asked a question.  “What do you mean about going to law about the clearin’?”

“Your worthy friend, Mr. Bates, has arrived in this place this very day.  He’s located with the Principal, he is.”

“He isn’t here,” she replied in angry scorn.

“All right.  Just as you please.”

“He isn’t here,” she said more sulkily.

“But he is.”

She ignored his replies.  “What do you mean about going to law about the land?”

“Why, I haven’t got much time left,”—­he was standing now with his watch in his hand—­“but for the sake of old times I’ll tell you, if you don’t see through that.  D’you suppose Bates isn’t long-headed!  He’s heard about Father Cameron being here, and knowing the old man couldn’t give an account of himself, he’s come to see him and pretend he’s your father.  Of course he’s no notion of you being here.  He swears right and left that you went over the hills and perished in the snow; and he’s got up great mourning and lamenting, so I’ve heard, for your death.  Oh, Jemima!  Can’t you see through that?”

“Tell me what you mean,” she demanded, haughtily.  She was standing again now.