“You shall love me—­” She was powerless in his embrace.  She felt his breath on her cheek, then he kissed her.  Breathless and crimson, she struggled and pushed him from her.  Suddenly his arms fell at hisside; his face was white.  “I was a brute to do that!—­Betty, forgive me!  I am sorry—­no, I can’t be sorry!"’

“How do you dare!  I hope I may never see you again—­I hate you —­” said Betty furiously, tears in her eyes and her pulses still throbbing from his fierce caress.

“Do you mean that?” he asked slowly, rising.

“Yes—­yes—­a million times, yes!”

“I don’t believe you—­I can’t—­I won’t!” They were alongside the New Madrid wharf now, and a certain young man who had been impatiently watching The Naiad’s lights ever since they became visible crossed the gang-plank with a bound.

“Betty—­why in the name of goodness did you ever, choose this tub?—­everything on the river has passed it!” said the newcomer.  Betty started up with a little cry of surprise and pleasure.

“Charley!”

Carrington stepped back.  This must be the brother who had come up the river from Memphis to meet her—­but her brother’s name was Tom!  He looked this stranger—­this Charley—­over with a hostile eye, offended by his good looks, his confident manner, in which he thought he detected an air of ownership, as if—­certainly he was holding her hands longer than was necessary!  Of course, other men were in love with her, such a radiant personality held its potent attraction for men, but for all that, she was going to belong to him—­Carrington!  She did like him; she had shown it in a hundred little ways during the last week, and he would give her up to no man—­give her up?—­there wasn’t the least tie between them—­except that kiss—­and she was furious because of it.  There was nothing for him to do but efface himself.  He would go now, before the boat started—­and an instant later, when Betty, remembering, turned to speak to him, his place by the rail was deserted.

CHAPTER IX

JUDGE SLOCUM PRICE

Athat day Hannibal was haunted by the memory of what he had heard and seen at Slosson’s tavern.  More than this, there was his terrible sense of loss, and the grief he could not master, when his thin, little body was shaken by sobs.  Marking the course of the road westward, he clung to the woods, where his movements were as stealthy as the very shadows themselves.  He shunned the scattered farms and the infrequent settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed either by Murrell or Slosson.  But as the dusk of evening crept across the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him forth into the highroad.  He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.