one little thing--the gift of a rifle wherewith to assure his
subsistence should he escape into the forest--and of all those at
Conjuror's House to whom he might turn for help, some were too hard
to give it to him, and some too afraid! He should have it! She,
the daughter of her father, would see to it that in this one
instance her father's sin should fail! Suddenly, in the white heat
of her emotion, she realized why these matters stirred her so
profoundly, and she stopped short and gasped with the shock of it.
It did not matter that she thwarted her father's will; it would not
matter if she should be discovered and punished as only these harsh
characters could punish. For the brave bearing, the brave jest,
the jaunty facing of death, the tender, low voice, the gay song,
the aurora-lit moment of his summons--all these had at last their
triumph. She knew that she loved him; and that if he were to die,
she would surely die too.

And, oh, it must be that he loved her! Had she not heard it in the
music of his voice from the first?--the passion of his tones? the
dreamy, lyrical swing of his talk by the old bronze guns?

Then she staggered sharply, and choked back a cry. For out of her
recollections leaped two sentences of his--the first careless,
imprudent, unforgivable; the second pregnant with meaning. "_Ah, a
star shoots_!" he had said. "_That means a kiss_!" and again, to
the clergyman, "_I came here without the slightest expectation of
getting what I asked for. There is another way, but I hate to use
it_."

She was the other way! She saw it plainly. He did not love her,
but he saw that he could fascinate her, and he hoped to use her as