Seagreave passed her father and was beside her in two strides.  “You’re going to do as you please,” he said.

She leaned toward him, smiling, her fugitively sweet, tantalizing smile; and, oblivious of the others, Seagreave caught her to him as if he would hold her against the world.

And, seeing this, Bob Flick turned and walked down the hill with never a backward glance.

Not so Gallito; his eyes had darkened, those fierce hawk’s eyes; his face was livid.  “Pearl,” his voice grated in his throat, “you can’t make a fool of both me and yourself like this.  You are a fool of a woman like all the rest, and because I have the bad luck to be your father I must save you from your own madness.  You’ve got your big chance, the chance you’ve been waiting for, and you’re not going to throw it away now, just because you been staying up in that cabin alone with him until you’ve lost your wits about him.”  He indicated Seagreave with a contemptuous jerk of the thumb.

“Seagreave,” in cold fury, “you’re a damned thief to take advantage of her this way.  Now, Pearl, you come on.”

He seized her by the wrist and would have drawn her roughly from Harry’s encircling arm.  She resisted, and Harry, in the strength of his indignation, unloosed the old man’s grasp and drew her hastily away.  But the touch of his hands had roused in Gallito fresh rage, and with almost unbelievable quickness he lifted his heavy, gnarled stick and swung it above Seagreave’s head.  Harry leaped back, near, perilously near, the edge of the ravine.  The soft, moist earth crumbled beneath his feet; for a second he tottered on the edge, and then went down like a shot.

Pearl stood arrested in that first, quick rush of hers, frozen, gazing in wild unbelief at the spot where Harry had disappeared.  As for Gallito, he also gazed almost uncomprehendingly, until the expression of surprise on his livid face gave way to a saturnine and vindictive satisfaction.

“He did it himself,” he muttered, “the fool!  I never touched him.”  Then, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands as if well content to leave the matter to fate, he turned and began to walk down the hill, still muttering as he went.

This roused Pearl from her momentary trance.  “Father,” she cried wildly, “you must help me.  You tried to hurt him and now you’ve got to help me.  We must get him.  Father, father,” she babbled, running after him, “you must stay, you must help me, you must.  You can’t go and leave him.  Oh, stay, stay, and I’ll do anything, anything in the world.  I’ll sign the contract.  I’ll do anything.”

But Gallito went on as if he did not hear her.  His own belief was that Harry was done for.  There was not one chance in a thousand that he was alive, one chance in a million, considering the depth of the ravine.  Well, better so.  His conscience was clear.  He had not struck him, but had merely lifted his stick in self-defense after Seagreave had laid hands on him.  As for Pearl, she would eventually turn to him and agree to his wishes, there was nothing else for her to do.  In the meantime, by leaving her to herself, he avoided the unpleasant sound and sight of her grief and reproaches.  Therefore, in spite of her passionate pleading, he went on.