“I don’t want to go back with Pappy Lon!” she whispered.

Everett caught his breath.  She was even more lovely than he had remembered.  Inwardly he cursed the squatters.  If he could eliminate them from his plans—­but they were necessary to him.

“I don’t like none o’ the bunch of ye!” Fledra burst out in his silence.  Brimbecomb’s lips formed a slight smile.  The girl pondered a moment, and continued fiercely, “And I hate Ithaca and all the squatters!”

“You speak very much like your father,” ventured the lawyer.  “I can’t understand why you hate him.  Your place is with him.”

The girl bowed her head and wept softly.  She realized that when she was excited she could not remember her English.

“I’ve been a squatter,” she said, forlornly shaking her head, “and I s’pose Pappy Lon has a right to me; but I love—­”

“You love whom?”

“Mr. Shellington.  Oh, Mr. Brimbecomb, can’t ye help me to keep away from Pappy Lon?  Can’t ye make him see that I don’t want to go back—­that I can’t go back to Lem Crabbe ever?”

“There’s no danger of your going to—­what did you say his name was?”

“Lem Crabbe—­the man with a hook on his arm.  I hate him so!”

“I remember seeing him once.  I don’t think you need worry over going with him.  Your father is not a fool.”

“He promised me to Lem!” wailed Flea.

“And he—­promised—­you to—­me!”

So deliberately did Everett speak that Fledra was on her feet before the sentence was finished.  Horror, deep-seated, rested in the eyes raised to his.  Oh, surely she had not heard aright!

“What did ye say?” she demanded.

“Your father has promised you to me.”

“Oh, that’s why you done it, was it?  That’s why ye fit Sister Ann and Brother Horace?  ’Cause ye wanted me to go with ye!  I hate ye like I hate—­the devil!”

Her words, grossly coarse, struck and stung the man to action.  He strode forward and grasped her arm roughly in his fingers.

“You little fury, what do I care how much you hate me?  It’s a man’s pleasure to conquer a woman like you.  You can have your choice between the other man and me.”

Dumb with fright and amazement, his treachery driving every thought from her mind for the moment, Fledra looked at him.

“I’d rather go with Lem,” she got out at last, “’cause I couldn’t stand yer hellish pretty face nor yer white teeth.  They look like them big stones standing over the dead men out yonder.”

With a backward motion of her head toward the window, Fledra drawled out the last words insultingly.  That she preferred Lem to him wounded Everett’s pride, but made him desire her the more.  He loved her just then so much that, if it had been in his power, he would have married her instantly.  Her fine-fibered spirit attracted all the evil in him as a magnet draws a needle.  Fledra brought him from his reverie.