“You are hurt,” she said, clutching his arm passionately.

“No,” he said.  “But I wouldn’t mind that if”—­

“You’re thinkin’ I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the shootin’, but I did come,” she went on feverishly.  “I ran back here when I heard the two shots, but you were gone.  I went to the corral, but your hoss wasn’t there, and I thought you’d got away.”

“I did get away,” said Dart gloomily.  “I killed the man, thinkin’ he was huntin’ me, and forgettin’ I was disguised.  He thought I was your father.”

“Yes,” said the girl joyfully, “he was after dad, and you—­you killed him.”  She again caught his hand admiringly.

But he did not respond.  Possibly there were points of honor which this horse-thief felt vaguely with her father.  “Listen,” he said grimly.  “Others think it was your father killed him.  When I did it—­for he fired at me first—­I ran to the corral again and took my hoss, thinkin’ I might be follered.  I made a clear circuit of the house, and when I found he was the only one, and no one was follerin’, I come back here and took off my disguise.  Then I heard his friends find him in the wood, and I know they suspected your father.  And then another man come through the woods while I was hidin’ and found the clothes and took them away.”  He stopped and stared at her gloomily.

But all this was unintelligible to the girl.  “Dad would have got the better of him ef you hadn’t,” she said eagerly, “so what’s the difference?”

“All the same,” he said gloomily, “I must take his place.”

She did not understand, but turned her head to her master.  “Then you’ll go back with me and tell him all?” she said obediently.

“Yes,” he said.

She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together.  She foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not love as she did.  She would not have taken these risks against their happiness.

But alas for ethics and heroism.  As they were issuing from the wood they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.

Salomy Jane turned to her lover.

*****

And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty, passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal, fastidious parent.  But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this romance is based.  A month later a handbill was posted on one of the sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold by auction to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay, Esq., and it was sold accordingly.  Still later—­by ten years—­the chronicler of these pages visited a certain “stock” or “breeding