with you if you will, but go."

Susannah went amazed, but she began to think that Ephraim's distress had
not been a gracious sorrow, but remorse for his own crime. He must have
shot Halsey as he would have shot at some evil beast. When she had time
to remember that Halsey had tottered when he walked, she fled back,
straining the blood-stained letter to her breast, and tore open the
closed door. Her aunt was sitting in a low chair sobbing. Ephraim,
bareheaded in the sunshine, was standing on the path shading his eyes to
scan the road. Susannah ran out, not to him (her shame and grief for him
were too deep for any word), but with intent to run after the wounded
man and nurse his wound.

"It can be but a slight flesh wound," said Ephraim mechanically.

She looked first where he was gazing, and saw that some distance down
the road Halsey was stepping into a chaise. Another man took the seat
beside him and they drove away.

Then she looked at Ephraim. He did not appear as though he felt his
guilt; he had the mien rather of one who was striving bravely to endure
hardship. Then indeed she felt that the gulf of thought must yawn wide
between them; she could even yet have pitied Ephraim's contrition, but
he was not contrite. In indignation she retired, sitting in the privacy
of her little bedroom.

It was a strange letter, not alone because the ink was blurred by blood
that, still warm, soaked it through in parts, but because, coming from
a young man to a maid, in the first flush of her strength and beauty, it
offered love and marriage, giving only as his reason, urging only as her