I ought to have been told long ago! They've kept me a perfect child to
whom everything has been bright and care-free and simple. I--I feel
that until this moment I have lacked my real womanhood!"

She bowed her head and passed through the log room into the outer air.

Her father, _her_ father, had willed this man's death, and so he was
to die! That explained many things--the young fellow's insolence, his
care-free recklessness, his passionate denunciation of the Reverend
Crane and the Reverend Crane's religion. He wanted 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