“Indeed, sir, I am not alone.  I have in the chaise with me a sick man, and I fear that he may be dying.  I thought to find friends, but it seems in the darkness I have missed my way.  I must beg of you to assist me to lift him into the house and give us shelter for the night.”

The men had remained perfectly still, drinking in her every syllable with that fierce thirst for news which is a first passion of dwellers in such desolate places; then, aroused by what they heard, they came forward across a rough bit of ground to the road.  The burly form of John Biery came first, and he called for a lantern, which was instantly produced by one of those who followed.  They held it up over Angel’s crouching form and death-like face.  Then they held it higher and stared at Susannah.  Her shawl had fallen from off her shoulders.  The handkerchief upon her neck was loose, and underneath the pink border of her bonnet the ringlets had begun to stray.  Her resolute face, so young and beautiful, startled them almost as an apparition might have done.

“I’m dead beat,” said the hotel-keeper under his breath, “if I ever seed anything like that!” But with the ready suspicion of a prudent householder he questioned her.  Where had the man come by the wound?  For they saw the blood-stained bandages she clasped.

Yesterday, she explained, he had received a slight bullet-wound by accident, and to-day, in their long travel, the loss of blood had disabled him.

“Does he belong to you, young lady?”

Susannah busied herself with the bandages for a moment, but terror had carried her far.  She replied with gentle decision, “He is my husband.”

CHAPTER IX.

“It is our fault.”

That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father’s sitting-room, near the door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms.  His shoulders were drooping.  His face was gray and haggard.  Even his hair and beard, damp, unkempt, seemed to express remorse in their outline.  He stood doggedly facing his father and mother, repeating the thing that he saw to be true, but with no further words to interpret his insight.

To his parents his opinions, his attitude, appeared as an outrage upon reason.  His father looked at him with greater severity than he had ever before exercised upon his only child.  “I reckon, Ephraim, that you speak without using the sense that the Almighty has been mercifully pleased to give you.  You know, Ephraim, the girl has been as a daughter in this house.  When has it been said to her that her father, dying in his worldly follies, left her destitute, the pittance she gets needing to go for his debts?  She’s had about as good a home as any girl should want, and your mother and the ministers have dealt faithfully with her concerning her soul.”

Ephraim made a movement of the head as if for a moment he could have stood upright, feeling in one respect innocent; then again there was nothing but the droop of shame visible.