She paused, breathing heavily, her head flung back, Her hands clenched as though in desperate effort at self-control.

“You—­you!” the words seemed fairly forced from between her lips, “there has never been a time when I would not have gone to you at a word, at your slightest expressed desire.  However I may have despised you in my secret heart, I remained loyal outwardly, and would have gone to you in response to the call of duty.  There is no such duty now.  You have openly insulted and degraded me; you have accused me before the world; you have dragged my name in the muck; you have attempted to dethrone my womanhood.  The past is over; it is over forever.  The law may continue to hold me as your wife, but I am not your wife.  The records of the church may so name me, but they are false.  A God of love could never have linked me to such a brute—­the very thought is infamy.  Do not touch me!  Do not speak to me!  I believe I could kill you easier than I could ever again yield to you so much as a word.”

She reeled as though about to fall, her hand pressed against her heart.  Before an arm could be out-stretched in support, she had rallied, and turned away.  With head lowered, her face shadowed by her hair she walked slowly toward the cabin.  No man in the group stirred until she had disappeared.  Then the sheriff fumblingly replaced his hat, his eyes wandering in uncertainty from Farnham to Winston.

“By God!” he exclaimed, as though in relief, catching his breath quickly and wiping his forehead.  “By God! but that was fierce.”  Recalling his own duty he reached out his hand and laid it heavily upon the shoulder of the man standing next him.  It chanced to be the Swede.

“Go on into the cabin,” he commanded, a returning sternness in the order.

The surprised man stared at him in dull bewilderment.

“Vat for Ay go—­hey?”

“Because you ’re under arrest.”

“Vat dot you say?  I vas arrest?  Maybe you not know me, hey?  Ay tells you vat Ay vas mighty quick.  Ay ban Nels Swanson; Ay ban Lutheran; Ay ban shovel—­”

“Oh, shut up; ye ’re under arrest, I tell you—­move on now.”

“Vat vas dis under arrest?” the blue eyes losing their mildness, the drooping moustache beginning to bristle.  “Ay no understand ’bout dis arrest.  Vat Ay do, hey?”

“Helped to kill Jack Burke.”

The startled Norseman stared at him, gulping, his eyes fairly protruding from his face, his breath hissing between his gritted teeth.  The wild berserker blood was surging hot through his veins.

“Ut vas von lie!  You kill me so!  By tamn, no!”

That instant, insane with fright, he grasped the astonished officer in the vise of his great hands, swung him into the air, and dashed him down headlong upon the rocks.  Uttering a yell like that of some wild animal, the fellow was off, striking against Winston with his body as he passed, leaping recklessly across the rocks, heading straight toward the nearest thicket.  It was all the work of a moment.  Farnham whirled and sent one shot after him; then, as suddenly remembering his own peril, wheeled back to face the others, the smoking revolver in his hand.  Amid the quick turmoil old Mike sprang to the summit of the rock rampart, his face flaming with enthusiasm.