Nancy looked across the lake. There was no sign of the canoe, and she was glad of it.

"Now, Dad," she said, tuning her utterance to a softer key in valiant endeavor to place their relations on a friendly footing, "I hope you will try and think less harshly of Derry and me. What is done cannot be undone----"

"It can be put straight, which is the next best thing," broke in Willard fiercely. "I'm not here to listen to _your_ plans; but you must listen to _mine_! I have no time to lose, nor have you; so I'll put my meaning in the plainest words possible, and I'll thank you not to interrupt me.

I'm not going to lecture you on morality, and that sort of thing--that's not my business. I have followed you with one object, and one only, and that is to take you back to your husband. Don't try to shut me up!" he almost screamed; for Nancy's indignation had crimsoned her face and neck again. "You've got to hear what I have to say, and it must be here and now. You'll know why when I have finished. I've thought this wretched affair through from A to Z, and _my_ way has to be _your_ way--unless you prefer the alternative. You either come with me now, this instant, and promise not to leave me until I hand you over to your husband, or I shall shoot Power at sight. That is my offer. Take it or leave it. I give you your fancy man's life in exchange for your obedience. Refuse, and I fill him full of lead. I'm running no bluff on you. I mean just what I am saying. I am not even taking any great risk, because there isn't a jury in America that would convict a father for killing the man who betrayed his daughter while her husband's back was turned. The dirty hound! I've got both him and you in a tight place, and now you're going to suffer, each of you. Condemn him to death if you like. I don't care a red cent which way your choice goes. But, if you want him to live, you must return to Marten, and be his good and loving wife once more. No, you gain nothing by shrinking away in horror at the notion. Nor will death serve your ends, since a silly woman would think little of giving her life to save her lover. You have my full and complete terms, no less, in exchange for Power's life. It won't save him if you agree to come away with me and throw yourself overboard before our steamer reaches Europe. That will mean simply that I take the next boat west, and kill Power. My plea still holds good. I am prepared to face any court with the proofs of my story. But I can't waste any more time.

Which is it to be--go or stay--give Power his life or take it? If you want to please me, which is about the last thing you would think of, refuse to come with me, because I am aching to empty these into his rotten carca.s.s."

Nancy had shrunk from his growing frenzy no less than from his monstrous decree; but her dilated eyes were fixed on his, utterly regardless of the brace of heavy-caliber revolvers he had produced, apparently to lend a theatrical effect to his words. In truth, the man had no such thought in his mind. He was beyond the reach of any impulse of that sort. His maniacal fury was real enough to convince the most skeptical that he fully intended every word of that murderous threat. Nor did the distracted girl harbor any doubt on that score. Suddenly, awfully, she had been scourged to the verge of a precipice, and it was borne in on her she had no option but to make the heartrending decision which the man whom she had once loved as a father was forcing on her.

Her very lips blanched, and she gazed at Willard with all the hatred and pa.s.sionate scorn of a woman wronged beyond redress.

"You--you--" she gasped incoherently, "you are not G.o.d! It is G.o.d alone who wields such power over men and women. He, and He only, may p.r.o.nounce a decree of life or death against those who have sinned--not you, a man who sold his own daughter for money!"

"Power told you that, did he? The story came well from the mouth of the cheat who robbed me of my property."

"But that is a lie. Why demean yourself by uttering such a plea?"

"We can argue the rights and wrongs of the matter some other time. Are you coming with me, or not?"

"No, a thousand times no!" she almost shrieked.

Willard repocketed the pistols, and turned to leave the hut. "That's right!" he chuckled sardonically. "I'd as soon have it that way as the other."

Nancy was quite beside herself with agony, or she would never have s.n.a.t.c.hed up the gun and held it pointblank at his back.

"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop, or I vow to Heaven I'll fire!"

He faced her again, and his frenzy was comparable only with that of the distracted girl who threatened him.

"If you want to shoot me you must reload your gun," he said, and his face grew livid, though not with fright. "Do you imagine that an old man like me fears death? Shoot, I tell you, and see if my last curse does not part you and Power. Test his love by telling him you are a murderess--that you have killed your own father. Ask him to help in hiding my body, and then cower in hourly terror, both of you, till a New York bank sends to my lawyer the letter I have left in its charge. Shoot me now, and I'll die happy in the knowledge that Power and you will be tried for my murder."

She dropped the gun, and burst into a tempest of weeping; but her tears seemed but to harden Willard into an even more callous and determined mood.

"Don't you forget that I am watching for the coming of that canoe," he said, sinking his voice to a note of sinister meaning. "If Power and I meet, nothing that you can do will save him. It is possible, of course, that he may avoid me this time. You can scream a warning, and he may, or may not, skulk off out of range. But, as sure as there is a sun shining in the sky, so surely will I follow and kill him. Each moment you hesitate brings him nearer the grave. You can save him, if you like; but you must buy his life on my terms, now. It will be too late in a few minutes."

She threw herself on her knees, and raised her swimming eyes in humblest pleading.

"Father, think what you are doing!" she sobbed, clutching at his hands in a heartbroken way. "I am your own little daughter, the girl you used to be so proud of, the girl who once loved you dearly, and who is ready to forget the past and love you again. You would not condemn me to the degraded life of a woman who loathes and has been unfaithful to her husband, and yet permits him to regard her as his wife? I may be the meanest of G.o.d's creatures in your sight; but you are asking me to act as no decent-minded woman can act, and live. Ah, no! Do not speak yet!

Listen, I implore you! G.o.d give me words to touch your heart! Have you blotted from your mind all recollection of our long years together on the ranch? Does it count for nothing that I rejoiced with you when times were good, and sorrowed with you when misfortunes came? Have you forgotten my mother? Ah, dear Heaven, my mother! You loved her, did you not? You have said you loved me, not alone for my own sake, but because I reminded you of her. She, at least, was good and pure, and perhaps her spirit is with us now, grieving for my sin, it may be, but surely not content with the dreadful lot you would impose on one who is your child and hers. Oh, father dear, do not turn away from me! Is there nothing I can promise that will soften your heart? I will leave Derry.

Yes, I swear it! To save him, and you, I'll go away and never see him again, writing him some cruel lie in order to a.s.suage his misery; but you shall not, you must not, make my return to Hugh Marten the price of my obedience to your will!"

Willard wrenched himself free, and took a sheet of notepaper, an envelop, and a pencil from a pocket. He placed them on the rough table, and stood in the doorway, watching the sunlit lake. His expression was dour, implacable, malignant in its ferocious joy; for he held Power in the hollow of his hand, and would relinquish naught of his vengeful scheme.

"I'm glad to see you are convinced that I mean what I have said," he announced, speaking in a cold, balanced way that Nancy knew of old, and recognized now as sounding the knell of her hopes. "Unless I am mistaken, the canoe is putting off from the hotel. It will be here in twenty minutes. You have just five minutes to make up your mind, and to write a farewell message to Power. I don't care what you say to him, so long as the break is final. You are going with me to Newport, and straight from there to London, where Marten will join us in response to a cablegram from me, telling him that you are ill. You had better stop crying. Nothing that you can say or do, short of loading that gun again and blowing a hole in me, will change either my purpose or my terms.

I'll keep my word with regard to Power if you keep yours where Marten is concerned. He must never know. He must never see any change in you. The moment he casts you off because of Power, and I am still alive, you sign Power's death-warrant."

Nancy rose. She was deathly white, and the tears still coursed silently down her cheeks; but despair had benumbed her emotions, and she spoke calmly.

"You are sentencing me to death," she said.

"Am I? Then Power dies, too," he cried.

"No. That is not in the bond. You stipulate that I shall return to Marten as his wife, and that I am not to take my own life. But if my heart breaks, and I die, you will have glutted your bitter malice already, and Derry, too, must not provide you with a victim."

"People don't die of broken hearts."

"Every woman who has loved will think differently. But you have some notion of what is meant by honor, I suppose? I demand your promise that if I accompany you now, and go back to Marten, and never attempt to meet Derry again--though that would be quite impossible, either for him or for me--you withdraw your threat, and leave him in peace during the remainder of your life."

"I'm not here to receive terms, but to state them."

"Then he and I will fall together beneath your bullets. Before you shoot him, you will have to shoot me."

"Very well, then. I agree. I don't want to kill my own daughter."

"You have done that already. You have slain her soul, and her poor body is of slight importance. Ah, may Heaven forgive me if I am not choosing aright! Derry, my own dear love, you must never know that I am doing this for your sake, or it will not be the wretch whom once I called father who becomes judge and jury and executioner in my behalf!"

Willard, still turned toward the lake, heard her drop on her knees again beside the table. She wrote a few words, very few; for her dazed brain was incapable now of framing other than the simplest sentences. Then she sealed the envelop, and kissed it, and went out. Brushing the tears from her eyes, she gave one long look across the shimmering water, and saw a black dot which she knew was the canoe heading straight for the cabin.

"Ah, dear G.o.d!" she sighed, pressing her clenched hands to her breast.

The storm pa.s.sed as quickly as it had arisen. She stooped, patted the dog, and bade him remain there on guard. Then, without ever a glance at Willard, she said:

"I have made my choice. I am ready!"

CHAPTER XI

POWER'S HOME-COMING

It chanced that Peter Granite occupied the fore part of the canoe; consequently, great as was the distance, he saw Willard and Nancy leaving the hut and disappearing among the trees. He tossed a question over his shoulder.

"You hain't been expectin' anyone, hev you?" he demanded.

"How do you mean?"

"I've a sort o' notion Mrs. Power has just quit, with a man."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep."

"Someone must have happened on the cabin. Perhaps she is showing him the road to the divide. Was the dog with her?"

"I hain't seen Guess; but a mile an' a half across this yer shinin'

water is a long ways ter spot a dawg."