A week had intervened since the attack, and from Jeff, who always brought Charley’s letters, Betty learned more of Charley’s condition than Charley himself had seen fit to tell.  According to Jeff his master was now able to get around pretty tolerable well, though he had a powerful keen misery in his side.

“That was whar’ they done kicked him most, Miss,” he added.  Betty shuddered.

“How much longer will he be confined to the house?” she asked.

“I heard him ’low to Mas’r Carrington, Miss, as how he reckoned he’d take a hossback ride to-morrow evenin’ if the black and blue was all come out of his features—­”

“Oh—­” gasped Betty.

“Seems like they was mighty careless whar’ they put their feet, don’t it, Miss?” said Jeff.

It was this information she gleaned from Jeff that led Betty to desperate lengths, to the making of what her cooler judgment told her was a desperate bargain.

At Thicket Point Charley Norton, greatly excited, .hobbled into the library in search of Carrington.  He found him reading by the open window.

“Look here, Bruce!” he cried.  “It’s settled; she’s going to marry me!”

The book slipped unheeded from Carrington’s hand to the floor.  For a moment he sat motionless, then he slowly pulled himself up out of his chair.

“What’s that?” he asked a trifle thickly.

“Betty Malroy is going to marry me,” said Norton.  Carrington gazed at him in silence.

“It’s settled, is it?” he asked at length.  He saw his own hopes go down in miserable wreck; they had been utterly futile from the first.  He had known all along that Norton loved her, the young planter had made no secret of it.  He had been less frank.

“I swear you take it quietly enough,” said Norton.

“Do I?”

“Can’t you wish me joy?”

Carrington held out his hand.

“You are not going to take any risks now, you have too much to live for,” he said haltingly.

“No, I’m to keep away from Belle Plain,” said Norton happily.  “She insists on that; she says she won’t even see me if I come there.  Everything is to be kept a secret; nothing’s to be known until we are actually married; it’s her wish—­”

“It’s to be soon then?” Carrington asked, still haltingly.

“Very soon.”

There was a brief silence.  Carrington, with face averted, looked from the window.

“I am going to stay here as long as you need me,” he presently said.  “She—­Miss Malroy asked me to, and then I am going back to the river where I belong.”

Norton turned on him quickly.

“You don’t mean you’ve abandoned the notion of turning planter?” he demanded in surprise.

“Well, yes.  What’s the use of my trying my hand at a business I don’t know the first thing about?”

“I wouldn’t be in too big a hurry to decide finally on that point,” urged Norton.