After the old man’s footsteps had died, I turned back to the girl opposite me and looked her over carefully.  My first impression of meekness I revised.  She did not look to be one bit meek.  Her lips were compressed, her nostrils wide, her level eyes unsubdued.  A person of sense, I said to myself, well balanced, who has learned when it is useless to kick against the pricks, but who has not necessarily on that account forever renounced all kicking.  It occurred to me that she must have had to be pretty thoroughly convinced before she had come to this frame of mind.  When she saw that I had heard all I wanted of the movements outside, she spoke hurriedly in her low, sweet voice: 

“Oh, I am so distressed!  This is all my doing!  I should have known better——­”

“Now,” I interrupted her, decisively, “let’s get down to cases.  You had nothing to do with this; nothing whatever.  I visited this ranch the first time out of curiosity, and to-night because I knew that I’d have to hit first to save my own life.  You had no influence on me in either case.”

“You thought this was my room—­I wrote you it was,” she countered, swiftly.

“I wanted to see you solely and simply that I might find out how to get at Hooper.  This is all my fault; and we’re going to cut out the self-accusations and get down to cases.”

I afterward realized that all this was somewhat inconsiderate and ungallant and slightly humiliating; I should have taken the part of the knight-errant rescuing the damsel in distress, but at that moment only the direct essentials entered my mind.

“Very well,” she assented in her repressed tones.

“Do you think he is listening to what we say; or has somebody listening?”

“I am positive not.”

“Why?”

“I lived in this room for two months, and I know every inch of it.”

“He might have some sort of a concealed listening hole somewhere, just the same.”

“I am certain he has not.  The walls are two feet thick.”

“All right; let it go at that.  Now let’s see where we stand.  In the first place, how do you dope this out?”

“What do you mean?”

“What does he intend to do with us?”

She looked at me straight, eye to eye.

“In the morning he will kill you—­unless you can contrive something.”

“Cheering thought.”

“There is no sense in not facing situations squarely.  If there is a way out, that is the only method by which it may be found.”

“True,” I agreed, my admiration growing.  “And yourself; will he kill you, too?”

“He will not.  He does not dare!” she cried, proudly, with a flash of the eyes.

I was not so sure of that, but there was no object in saying so.

“Why has he tied you in that chair, then, along with the condemned?” I asked.

“You will understand better if I tell you who I am.”