“Good-night.  Jack Rance,—­good-night!”

Rance seized the hand with an almost fierce gladness in both his own, his keen glance hungrily striving to read her face.  Then, suddenly, he released her, drawing back his hand with a quick sharpness.

“Why, look at my hand!  There’s blood on it!” he said.

And even as he spoke, under the yellow flare of the lamp, the Girl saw a second drop of blood fall at her feet.  Like a flash, the terrible significance of it came upon her.  Only by self-violence could she keep her glance from rising, tell-tale, to the boards above.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she heard herself saying contritely, all the time desperately groping to invent a reason; at length, she added futilely:  “I must have scratched you.”

Rance looked puzzled, staring at the spatter of red as though hypnotised.

“No, there’s no scratch there,” he contended, wiping off the blood with his handkerchief.

“Oh, yes, there is,” insisted the Girl tremulously; “that is, there will be in the mornin’.  You’ll see in the mornin’ that there’ll be—­” She stopped and stared in frozen terror at the sinister face of the Sheriff, who was coolly watching his handkerchief turn from white to red under the slow rain of blood from the loft above.

“Oho!” he emitted sardonically, stepping back and pointing his gun towards the loft.  “So, he’s up there!”

The Girl’s fingers clutched his arm, dragging desperately.

“No, he isn’t, Jack—­no, he isn’t!” she iterated in blind, mechanical denial.

With an abrupt movement, Rance flung her violently from him, made a grab at the suspended ladder and lowered it into position; then, deaf to the Girl’s pleadings, harshly ordered Johnson to come down, meanwhile covering the source of the blood-drops with his gun.

“Oh, wait,—­wait a minute!” begged the Girl helplessly.  What would happen if he couldn’t obey the summons?  He had spent himself in his climb to safety.  Perhaps he was unconscious, slowly bleeding to death!  But even as she tortured herself with fears, the boards above creaked as though a heavy body was dragging itself slowly across them.  Johnson was evidently doing his best to reach the top of the ladder; but he did not move quickly enough to suit the Sheriff.

“Come down, or I’ll—­”

“Oh, just a minute, Jack, just a minute!” broke in the Girl frantically.  “Don’t shoot!—­Don’t you see he’s tryin’ to—?”

“Come down here, Mr. Johnson!” reiterated the Sheriff, with a face inhuman as a fiend.

The Girl clenched her hands, heedless of the nails cutting into her palms:  “Won’t you wait a moment,—­please, wait, Jack!”

“Wait?  What for?” the Sheriff flung at her brutally, his finger twitching on the trigger.