And always,--always I have loved you so. You will never know how I
longed to come back and have you kiss me, and pet me, and call me
those silly names you used--"

"What's done, is done," he broke in heavily. "He is dead. It had to
be. I was insane,--mad with all these months of hatred. It is done.
Come,--there is nothing you can do. Come back into the house. I
will carry him in--and wake somebody. Tomorrow they will come and
take me away. They will hang me. I am ready. Let them come. You
must not stand there in the cold, my child."

She toppled forward into his arms, and he lifted her as if she were
a babe and carried her into the house. The collie was whining in
the corner. Windom sat down in the big armchair before the fire,
still holding the girl in his arms. She was moaning weakly. Suddenly
a great, overwhelming fear seized him,--the fear of being hanged!

A long time afterward,--it was after two,--he arose from his knees
beside the lounge and prepared to go out into the night once more.
Alix had promised not to send her father to the gallows. She was
almost in a stupor after the complete physical and mental collapse,
but she knew what she was doing, she realized what she was promising
in return for the blow that had robbed her of the man she loved.

No one will ever know just what took place in that darkened
sitting-room, for the story as afterwards related was significantly
lacking in details. The light had been extinguished and the doors
silently closed by the slayer. The stiffening body of Edward Crown
out in the snow was not more silent than the interior of the old
farmhouse, apart from the room in which David Windom pleaded with