deepening twilight there seemed to be something familiar in the outlines of face and form.

"Who—who are you?" she faltered.

It was his turn to start as he heard her voice, and gazed with sudden searching into her pale face in the gloaming. Then she knew him—knew, and yet could hardly believe her eyes, her ears, her instincts—could not realize that in this rough, disordered, unkempt figure, with the torn clothes and the dark stains on his ragged sleeve, she saw the handsome, graceful, debonair lover of her girlhood, the recreant bridegroom who had left her on the very threshold of the altar!

"Oliver!" she said, in a low and trembling tone.

And as the last faint glimmer of the dying day rested on her face he knew her too.

"Barbara!" he ejaculated, as if with a gasp, fairly staggered by the recognition. "Is it—can it be—Barbara?"

"Am I so changed?" she rejoined, with a touch of bitterness in her tone.

"I—I didn't know—in this light," he stammered. "If—if I had known——" He seemed for the moment more agitated than she. She stood stunned, silent, gazing at him as if in a dream. "I won't intrude on you, Barbara," he said, in a low, unsteady voice. "I didn't know you lived here. It isn't to you that I should have come."

"Oliver!" she exclaimed suddenly, waking up as he made a movement to turn away. "Stay! Did you ask for food and shelter?"

"I ask nothing from you," he replied, painfully.

"Come in," she said, firmly, no longer faltering or tremulous, but with an almost imperious gesture motioning him to enter. "You are tired?" as she noticed his stiff and dragging step. "Sit down while I get a light." She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had some accident," she said, with a scrutinizing but not ungentle glance.

"Only a scratch," he answered, in a mechanical way, as if thinking of something else. "But my coat was nearly torn off my back scrambling through the chaparral yonder." He had not taken the chair she pointed out to him, but stood—leaning with the heaviness of fatigue against the shelf that served as a table—looking at her in the lamp-light. She saw how pale and haggard and half-famished-looking he was, and turned promptly to set out the supper.

"Wait, Barbara," he said, abruptly, and evidently with an effort. "Don't be doing anything for me till you know what you're doing. Those d—— hounds of the Vigilance Committee are after me; they're on my track now. They'll string me up to the nearest tree if they catch me; it's my life that's in your hands at this minute. I know too well I don't deserve of you that you should save it. And on the whole, Barbara," he added, with a touch of the light and half-mocking coolness she remembered of old, yet with more of bitterness now, "I don't know that it's worth saving."

"HAGGARD AND HALF FAMISHED."

Barbara turned even paler than she had been as she listened to his words. "What is it you have done?" she asked.

"Oh, I've not killed anyone. Better for me if I had! One may shoot a man, but to take a horse is a hanging matter here."

"Tell me about it, Oliver," she said, preserving her self-possession, for she was no fragile flower to wilt and droop before the first breath of danger—no, nor the last.

"It's soon told," he answered. "I had bad luck—I was cleaned out, not a red cent in my pockets—and so I hired out to a farmer away in Pine Valley. We had words one day, and he refused to pay me my wages—so I took a horse out of his stables and rode off."

"It was madness, Oliver," she said; for she knew as well as he did that for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be accused, death to be detected.

"The horse was worth no more than my fair wages," he rejoined. "I was warned that they were after me, but I thought I'd got a good start of them. They were too sharp for me, though—they cut across by Devil's Ford, and were after me in full chase. They sent a hail of bullets after me; I sent all I had back—I winged one of them—I fancy he was the leader, and while they picked him up I got ahead; but, unluckily, before I was out of shot-range my horse was shot under me. I got clear of the saddle and bolted into the scrub. I gave them the slip for the time. I've been crawling like a dog through the chaparral—but you know as well as I do, those fellows are like blood-hounds on the scent. I was pretty nearly dead-beat when I caught sight of this place. I little thought it was you that I should find here."

"What is to be done?" she said, not helplessly wondering, but actively thinking. "First of all, you must eat and drink. Then—we must see what is the safest thing for you."

She set bread and meat and milk on the table; and Desmond fell to the simple meal as if half famished.

"My brother's horse is in the stable," said Barbara, thoughtfully. "He's fast, is old Sultan, and might take you safe—if we only knew from which quarter they'd be coming; and I'd take the risk with Tom."

"You must risk nothing for me," he rejoined. "I see, Barbara, you are what you always were—the salt of the earth! I deserve of you that you should shut your door on me now—that when they come this way after me you should send them on my trail. But—you won't do it?"

"No," she replied, slowly. "I will not do it."

He leant forward, resting his arm on the table, and looked at her. The oil-lamp that stood between them shed a circle of light in which he saw her face, unshrinking, steadfast, wrought up to high resolve.

"You were always too good for me, Barbara," he said. "Are you such an angel as to have forgiven me?"

"What has that to do with it?" she rejoined, coldly. "Enough that if I can help you now, I will."

She was looking at him as intently as he at her. She saw how changed was the face of the idol of her girlhood—poor shattered idol with the feet of clay—base metal she had taken for pure gold! It was not only that he was older—he had aged more than she—but a subtler change had passed over him; he was hardened, embittered, coarsened, undefinably deteriorated. She saw the colour mount in his haggard cheek at her calm words.

"Coals of fire," he said, with a touch of bitter mockery that disguised pain. "Well, if it's a comfort to you to know it, Barbara, they burn."

"Which way are they most likely to come?" she asked, putting personal questions determinedly aside.

"They'd probably skirt the wood; but yet there's no knowing but what they might make their way down the gulch and round by the creek yonder."

"Whichever way you go," she said, in deep consideration, "you might run right into the jaws of danger. And if they found you with another horse, and that horse discovered not to be yours, it might be worse for you—if they refused to believe it had been freely lent to you."

"They'd not be likely to waste much time on inquiries," he observed, drily. "It's not their way to make allowance for priest or prayer. Perhaps I had better lie low for a time until the heat of the chase is over. Who is here with you, Barbara?"

"No one to-day. My brother and his wife are out until to-morrow."

"You are alone?" he said, with a softening of tender respect in his tone. "Forgive my intrusion. You must not risk the least trouble for me. I'll feel like a king after this rest and refreshment here, and be ready to go on my way."

They were still discussing the best course to be adopted when a faint sound in the distance struck on