He seated himself on the wooden bench and his grandmother helped him from a smoking plate of venison. He looked tired and troubled, and he had not even taken note that a stranger was beside Isidro in the shadows.

“What nettle stings you, boy?” asked his grandfather sarcastically, and at that he looked up and rose to his feet at sight of Rhodes.

“Your pardon, señor, I stumbled past like a bat blind in the light,” he muttered, and as he met Kit’s eyes and recognized him his face lit up and his white teeth gleamed in a smile.

“The saints are in it that you are here again, señor!” he exclaimed, “and you came on this day when most needed.”

“Eat and then tell your meaning,” said Isidro, but Clodomiro glanced toward the kitchen, and then listened for the other boys. They were laughing down at the corral. Clodomiro’s horse had thrown one of them.

“With your permission, grandfather, talk first,” he said and the two men moved to the bench opposite, leaning over towards him as his voice was lowered.

“Today Marto Cavayso sent for me, he is foreman over there, and strange things are going forward. He has heard that General Rotil stripped Mesa Blanca and that all white people are gone from it. He wants this house and will pay us well to open the door. It is for the woman. They have played a game for her, and he has won, but she is a wild woman when he goes near her, and his plan is to steal her out at night and hide her from the others. So he wants this house. He offered me a good gun. He offers us the protection of Don José Perez.”

“But–why–that is not credible,” protested Kit. “He could not count on protection from Perez if he stole the woman whom many call Señora Perez, for that is what they did call Doña Jocasta in Hermosillo.”

“Maybe so,” assented Clodomiro stolidly, “but now he is to be the esposo of a Doña Dolores who is the child of General Terain, so Marto says. Well, this Doña Jocasta has done some killing, and Don José does not give her to prison. He sends her to the desert that she brings him no disgrace; and if another man takes her or sinks her in the quicksands then that man will be helping Don José. That is how it is. Marto says the woman has bewitched him, and he is crazy about her. Some of the other men, will take her, if not him.”

Kit exchanged a long look with the old Indian.

“The house is yours, señor,” said Isidro. “By the word of Señor Whitely, you are manager of Mesa Blanca.”

“Many thanks,” replied Kit, and sat with his elbows on the table and his hands over his eyes, thinking–thinking of the task he had set himself in Sonora, and the new turn of the wheel of fortune.

“You say the lady is a prisoner?” he asked.

“Sure,” returned Clodomiro promptly. “She broke loose coming through a little pueblo and ran to the church. She found the priest and told him things, so they also take that priest! If they let him go he will talk, and Don José wanting no talk now of this woman. That priest is well cared for, but not let go away. After awhile, maybe so.”

“She is bright, and her father was a priest,” mused Kit. “So there is three chances out of four that she can read and write,–a little anyway. Could you get a letter to her?”

“Elena could.”

Kit got up, took one of the candles from the table and walked through the rooms surrounding the patio. Some of them had wooden bars in the windows, but others had iron grating, and he examined these carefully.

“There are two rooms fit for perfectly good jails,” he decided, “so I vote we give this bewitched Don Marto the open door. How many guns can we muster?”

“He promised to give me one, and ammunition.”

“Well, you get it! Get two if you can, but at least get plenty of ammunition. Isidro, will your wife be brave and willing to help?”

The old Indian nodded his head vigorously and smiled. Evidently only a stranger would ask if his Valencia could be brave!

The two brothers came in, and conversation was more guarded until Clodomiro had finished his supper, and gone a little ways home with them to repay them the long wait for comradeship.

When he came back Kit had his plans fairly settled, and had a brief note written to Señora Jocasta Perez, as follows:

Honored Señora:

One chance of safety is yours. Let yourself be persuaded to leave Soledad with Marto. You will be rescued from him by

An American.

“I reckon that will do the trick,” decided Kit. “I feel like a blooming Robin Hood without the merry men,–but the Indians will play safe, even if they are not merry. When can you get this to Elena?”

“In time of breakfast,” said Clodomiro promptly. “I go tonight, and tomorrow night he steals that woman. Maybe Elena helps.”

“You take Elena a present from me to encourage that help,” suggested Kit, and he poured a little of the gold from his belt on the paper. “Also there is the same for you when the lady comes safe. It is best that you make willing offer of your service in all ways so that he calls on none of his own men for help.”

“As you say, señor,” assented Clodomiro, “and that will march well with his desires, for to keep the others from knowing is the principal thing. She has beauty like a lily in the shade.”

“He tells you that?” asked Kit quizzically, but the boy shook his head.

“My own eyes looked on her. She is truly of the beauty of the holy pictures of the saints in the chapel, but Marto says she is a witch, and has him enchanted;–also that evil is very strong in her. I do not know.”

“Well, cross your fingers and tackle the job,” suggested Kit. “Get what sleep you can, for you may not get much tomorrow night. It is the work of a brave man you are going to do, and your pay will be a man’s pay.”

The eyes of the Indian boy glowed with pleasure.

“At your service, señor. I will do this thing or I will not see Mesa Blanca again.”

Kit looked after Clodomiro and rolled another cigarette before turning in to sleep.

“When all’s said and done, I may be the chief goat of this dame adventure,” he told himself in derision. “Maybe my own fingers need crossing.”

CHAPTER XIII
A WOMAN OF EMERALD EYES

At the first break of dawn, Rhodes was up, and without waiting for breakfast walked over to the rancherias of Palomitas to see Tula.

She was with some little girls and old women carrying water from the well as stolidly as though adventure had never stalked across her path. A whole garment had been given her instead of the tatter of rags in which she had returned to the little Indian pueblo. She replied briefly to his queries regarding her welfare, and when he asked where she was living, she accompanied him to an old adobe where there were two other motherless children–victims of the raiders.

An old, half-blind woman stirred meal into a kettle of porridge, and to her Kit addressed himself.

“A blessing will be on your house, but you have too many to feed here,” he said “and the child of Miguel should go to the ranch house of Mesa Blanca. The wife of Isidro is a good woman and will give her care.”

“Yes, señor, she is a good woman,” agreed the old Indian. “Also it may be a safe house for a maiden, who knows? Here it is not safe; other raiders may come.”

“That is true. Send her after she has eaten.”

He then sought out one of the older men to learn who could be counted on to round up the stray cattle of the ranges. After that he went at once back to the ranch house, and did not even speak to Tula again. There was nothing to indicate that she was the principal object of his visit, or that she had acquired a guardian who was taking his job seriously.

Later in the day she was brought to Mesa Blanca by an elderly Indian woman of her mother’s clan, and settled in the quiet Indian manner in the new dwelling place. Valencia was full of pity for the girl of few years who had yet known the hard trail, and had mourned alone for her dead.

There was a sort of suppressed bustle about la casa de Mesa Blanca that day, dainties of cookery prepared with difficulty from the diminished stores, and the rooms of the iron bars sprinkled and swept, and pillows of wondrous drawnwork decorated the more pretentious bed. To Tula it was more of magnificence than she had ever seen in her brief life, and the many rooms in one dwelling was a wonder. She would stand staring across the patio and into the various doorways through which she hesitated to pass. She for whom the wide silences of the desert held few terrors, hesitated to linger alone in the shadows of the circling walls. Kit noted that when each little task was finished for Valencia, she would go outside in the sunlight where she had the familiar ranges and far blue mountains in sight.

“Here it makes much trouble only to live in a house,” she said pointing to the needlework on a table cover. “The bowls of food will make that dirty in one eating, and then what? Women in fine houses are only as mares in time of thrashing the grain–no end and no beginning to the work,–they only tread their circle.”

“Right you are, sister,” agreed Kit, “they do make a lot of whirligig work for themselves, all the same as your grandmothers painting pottery that smash like eggshells. But life here isn’t all play at that, and there may be something doing before sleep time tonight. I went after you so I would have a comrade I knew would stick.”

She only gazed at him without question.

“You remember, Tula, the woman led by the padre at Soledad?”

She nodded silently.

“It may be that woman is captive to the same men who took your people,” he said slowly watching her, “and it may be we can save her.”

“May it also be that we can catch the man?” she asked, and her eyes half closed, peered up at him in curious intensity. “Can that be, O friend?”

“Some day it must surely be, Tula.”

“One day it must be,–one day, and prayers are making all the times for that day,” she insisted stolidly. “The old women are talking, and for that day they want him.”

“What day, Tula?”

“The Judas day.”

Kit Rhodes felt a curious creepy sensation of being near an unseen danger, some sleeping serpent basking in the sun, harmless until aroused for attack. He thought of the gentle domestic Valencia, and now this child, both centered on one thought–to sacrifice a traitor on the day of Judas!

“Little girls should make helpful prayers,” he ventured rather lamely, “not vengeance prayers.”

“I was the one to make cry of a woman, when my father went under the earth,” she said. It was her only expression of the fact that she had borne a woman’s share of all their joint toil in the desert,–and he caught her by the shoulder, as she turned away.

“Why, Kid Cleopatra, it isn’t a woman’s work you’ve done at all. It’s a man’s job you’ve held down and held level,” he declared heartily. “That’s why I am counting on you now. I need eyes to watch when I have to be in other places.”

“I watch,” she agreed, “I watch for you, but maybe I make my own prayers also;–all the time prayers.”

“Make one for a straight trail to the border, and all sentries asleep!” he suggested. “We have a pile of yellow rock to get across, to say nothing of our latest puzzling prospect.”

As the day wore on the latest “prospect” presented many complications to the imagination, and he tramped the corridors of Mesa Blanca wondering why he had seen but one side of the question the night before, for in the broad light of day there seemed a dozen, and all leading to trouble! That emerald-eyed daughter of a renegade priest had proven a host in herself when it came to breeding trouble. She certainly had been unlucky.

“Well, it might be worse,” he confided to Bunting out in the corral. “Cap Pike might have tagged along to discourse on the general tomfoolery of a partner who picks up a damsel in distress at every fork of the trail. Not that he’d be far wrong at that, Baby. If any hombre wanted to catch me in a bear trap he’d only need to bait it with a skirt.”

Baby Bunting nodded sagaciously, and nuzzled after Kit who was cleaning up the best looking saddle horse brought in from the Indian herd. It was a scraggy sorrel with twitchy ears and wicked eyes, but it looked tough as a mountain buck. Kit knew he should need two like that for the northern trail, and had hopes that the bewitched Marto Cavayso, whoever he was, would furnish another.

He went steadily about his preparations for the border trail, just as if the addition of an enchantress with green-jewel eyes was an every day bit of good fortune expected in every outfit, but as the desert ranges flamed rose and mauve in the lowering sun there was a restless expectancy at the ranch house, bolts and locks and firearms were given final inspection. Even at the best it was a scantily manned fort for defense in case Mario’s companions at dice should question his winning and endeavor to capture the stake.

“I shall go part way on the Soledad trail and wait what happens,” he told Isidro. “I will remain at a distance unless Clodomiro needs me. There is no telling what tricks this Cavayso may have up his sleeve.”

“I was thinking that same thought,” said the old Indian. “The men of Perez are not trusted long, even by Perez. When it is a woman, they are not trusted even in sight! Go with God on the trail.”

The ugly young sorrel ran tirelessly the first half of the way, just enough to prove his wind. Then they entered a cañon where scrub cottonwoods and greasebush gathered moisture enough for scant growth among the boulders worn out of the cliffs by erosion. It was the safest place to wait, as it was also the most likely place for treachery if any was intended to Clodomiro. At either end of the pass lay open range and brown desert, with only far patches of oasis where a well was found, or a sunken river marked a green pasture in some valley.

When he wrote the note he had not thought of danger to Clodomiro, regarding him only as a fearless messenger, but if the boy should prove an incumbrance to Cavayso after they were free of Soledad, that might prove another matter, and as old Isidro had stated, no one trusted a Perez man when a woman was in question!

He dismounted to listen and seek safe shadow, for the dusk had come, and desert stars swung like brilliant lamps in the night sky, and the white rocks served as clear background for any moving body.

The plan was, if possible, to get the woman out with Clodomiro while the men were at supper. The manta of Elena could cover her, and if she could walk with a water jar to the far well as any Indian woman would walk, and a horse hid in the willows there–!

It had been well thought out, and if nothing had interfered they should have reached the cañon an hour earlier. If Clodomiro had failed it might be a serious matter, and Kit Rhodes had some anxious moments for the stolen woman while dusk descended on the cañon.

He listened for the beat of horse hoofs, but what he heard first was a shot, and a woman’s scream, and then the walls of the cañon echoed the tumult of horses racing towards him in flight.

He recognized Clodomiro by the bare head and banda, and a woman bent low beside him, her manta flapping like the wings of a great bird as her horse leaped forward beside the Indian boy.

Back of them galloped a man who slowed up and shot backward at the foremost of a pursuing band.

He missed, and the fire was returned, evidently with some effect, for the first marksman grunted and cursed, and Kit heard the clatter of his gun as it fell from his hand. He leaned forward and spurred his horse to outrun the pursuers. He was evidently Marto.

Kit had a mental vision of fighting Marto alone for the woman at Mesa Blanca, or fighting with the entire band and decided to halt the leader of the pursuers and gain that much time at least for the woman and Clodomiro.

He had mounted at the first sound of the runaways, and crouching low in the saddle, hid back of the thick green of a dwarfed mesquite, and as the leader came into range against the white rock well he aimed low and touched the trigger.

The horse leaped up and the rider slid off as the animal sunk to the ground. Kit guided his mount carefully along shadowed places into the road expecting each instant a shot from the man on the ground.

But it did not come, and he gained the trail before the other pursuers rounded the bend of the cañon. The sound of their hoofs would deafen them to his, and once on the trail he gave the sorrel the rein, and the wild thing went down the gully like an arrow from a bow.

He was more than a little puzzled at the silence back of him. The going down of the one man and horse had evidently checked all pursuit. Relieved though he was at the fact, he realized it was not a natural condition of affairs, and called for explanation.

The other three riders were a half mile ahead and he had no idea of joining them on the trail. It occurred to him there was a possible chance of taking a short cut over the point of the mesa and beating them to the home ranch. There was an even chance that the rougher trail would offer difficulties in the dark, but that was up to the sorrel and was worth the trial.

The bronco took the mesa walls like a cat, climbed and staggered up, slid and tumbled down and crossed the level intervening space to the corral as the first sound of the others came beating across the sands.

A dark little figure arose by the corral bars and reached for the horse as he slipped from the saddle.

“Quickly, Tulita!” he said, stripping saddle and bridle from its back, “one instant only to make ourselves as still as shadows under the walls of the house.”

Fast as he ran, she kept pace with him to the corridor where Isidro waited.

“All is well,” he said briefly to the old man. “Clodomiro comes safe with the señora, and the man who would steal her was shot and lost his gun. All has gone very well.”

“Thanks to God!” said the old Indian. “The stealing of women has ever been a danger near, but luck comes well to you, señor, and it is good to be under the protection of you.”

“Open the door and show a light of welcome,” said Kit. “Call your wife and let all be as planned by us. I will be in the shadows, and a good gun for safety of the woman if needed, but all will work well, as you will see.”

The three riders came up to the portal before dismounting, and Valencia went forward, while Isidro held high a blazing torch, and Clodomiro dismounted quickly, and offered help to the woman.

“My grandmother has all for your comfort, señora,” he said, “will it please you to descend?”

The man swung from the saddle, awkwardly nursing his right arm.

“Yes this is a safe place, Doña Jocasta,” he declared. “It is all well arranged. With your permission I may assist you.”

He offered his left hand, but she looked from him to Valencia, and then to Clodomiro.

“You are young to be a stealer of women;–the saints send you a whiter road!” she said. “And you may help me, for my shoulder has a hurt from that first shot of the comrade of this man.”

“No, señora,” stated her captor, “the evil shot came from no comrade of mine. They did not follow us, those bandits–accursed be their names! They were hid in the cañoncita and jumped our trail. But have no fear, Doña Jocasta, they are left behind, and it will be my pleasure to nurse the wounds they have made.”

“Be occupied with your own,” she suggested pointing to his hand from which blood still dripped, “and you, mother, can show me the new prison. It can be no worse than the others.”

“Better, much better, little dove,” said Marto, who followed after the two women, and glanced over their shoulders into the guest chamber of the iron bars, “it is a bird cage of the finest, and a nest for harmonies.”

Then to Valencia he turned with authority, “When you have made the señorita comfortable, bring the key of the door to me.”

“Si, señor,” said Valencia bending low, and even as the prisoner entered the room, she changed the key to the outside of the door. Marto nodded his approval and turned away.

“Now this shirt off, and a basin of water and a bandage,” he ordered Isidro. “It is not much, and it still bleeds.”

“True, it does, señor, and the room ordered for you has already the water and a clean shirt on the pillow. Clodomiro, go you for a bandage, and fetch wine to take dust out of the throat! This way, señor,–and may you be at home in your own house!”

Unsuspecting, the amorous Marto followed the old man into the room prepared. He grunted contemptuous satisfaction at evidences of comfort extending to lace curtains hanging white and full over the one window.

“It is the time for a shirt of such cleanness,” he observed, with a grin. “Jesusita! but the sleeve sticks to me! Cut it off, and be quick to make me over into a bridegroom.”

The old man did as he was bidden, and when Clodomiro brought in a woven tray covered with a napkin from which a bottle of wine was discernible, Marto grinned at him.

“It is a soft nest you found for me, boy,” he said appreciatively, “and when I am capitan I will make you lieutenant.”

“Thanks to you, señor, and hasten the day!”

Clodomiro assisted his grandfather, and stood aside at the door respectfully as the old man passed out with his primitive supply of salves and antiseptics, and only when all need of caution was ended the boy smiled at the would-be Lothario, and the smile held a subtle mockery as he murmured, “The saints send you a good night’s sleep, señor, and a waking to health–and clearer sight!”

“Hell and its blazes to you! why do you grin?” demanded the other setting down the bottle from which he had taken a long and grateful drink, but quick as a cat the boy pulled the door shut, and slipped the bolt on the outside, and laughed aloud.

“Not this night will you be bridegroom for another man’s wife, señor!” he called. “Also it is better that you put curb on your curses,–for the lady has a mind for a quiet night of sleep.”

Marto rushed to the curtained window only to find iron bars and the glint of a gun barrel. Isidro held the gun, and admonished the storming captive with the gentle fatalism of the Indian.

“It is done under orders of the major-domo, señor. There is no other way. If your words are hard or rough to the ears of the lady, there is a bullet for you, and a hidden place for your grave. This is the only word to you, señor. It is given me to say.”

“But–Gods, saints, and devils–hearken you to me!” stormed the man. “This is a fool’s joke! It can’t go on! I must be back at sunrise–I must!”

“You will see many suns rise through these bars if the padrone so pleases,” murmured Isidro gently. “That is not for us to decide.”

“To hottest hell with your padrone and you! Bring him here to listen to me. This is no affair of a man and a woman,–curse her witch eyes and their green fires! There is work afoot,–big work, and I must get back to Soledad. You know what goes over the trail to Soledad,–every Indian knows! It is the cache of ammunition with which to save the peon and Indian slave,–you know that! You know the revolutionists must get it to win in Sonora. A trap is set for tomorrow, a big trap! I must be there to help spring it. To you there will be riches and safety all your life for my freedom–on the cross I will swear that. I–”

“Señor, nothing is in my power, and of your traps I know nothing. I am told you set a trap for a lady who is in grief and your own feet were caught in it. That is all I know of traps,” said Isidro.

Kit patted the old man on the shoulder for cleverness, even while he wondered at the ravings of the would-be abductor. Then he crept nearer the window where he could see the face of the prisoner clearly, and without the overshadowing hat he had worn on entrance. The face gave him something to think about, for it was that of one of the men who had ridden up to the Yaqui spring the day he had found Tula and Miguel in the desert. How should this rebel who rode on secret trails with Ramon Rotil be head man at Soledad for Rotil’s enemy? And what was the trap?

“Look well at that man, Isidro,” he whispered, “and tell me if such a man rode here to Mesa Blanca with General Rotil.”

“No such man was here, señor, but this man was foreman at Soledad before the Deliverer came over the eastern range to Mesa Blanca. Also the general and Don José Perez are known as enemies;–the friend of one cannot be the friend of another.”

“True enough, Isidro, but that does not help me to understand the trap set. Call your wife and learn if I can see the Doña Jocasta.”

Tula had crept up beside them, and touched him on the arm.

“She asks for you, and sadness is with her very much. She watches us in fear, and cannot believe that the door is open for her.”

“If that is her only trouble we can clear it away for her, pronto,” he stated, and they entered the patio.

“It is not her only trouble, but of the other she does not speak. Valencia weeps to look at her.”

“Heavens! Is she as bad looking as that?”

“No, it is another reason,” stated the girl stolidly. “She is a caged humming bird, and her wings have broken.”

Kit Rhodes never forgot that first picture of their kidnaped guest, for he agreed with Clodomiro who saw in her the living representation of old biblical saints.

The likeness was strengthened by the half Moorish drapery over her head, a black mantilla which, at sound of a man’s step, she hurriedly drew across the lower part of her face. Her left arm and shoulder was bare, and Valencia bent over her with a strip of old linen for bandage, but the eyes of Doña Jocasta were turned half shrinking, half appraising to the strange Americano. It was plain to her that conquering men were merely the owners of women.

“It is good you come, señor,” said Valencia. “Here is a wound and the bullet under the skin. I have waited for Isidro to help but he is slow on the way.”

“He is busy otherwise, but I will call him unless my own help will serve here. That is for the señora to say.”

The eyes of the girl,–she was not more,–never left his face, and above the lace scarf she peered at him as through a mask.

“It is you who sent messenger to save an unhappy one you did not know? You are the Americano of the letter?”

“At your service, señora. May that service begin now?”

“It began when that letter was written, and this room made ready,” she said. “And if you can find the bullet it will end the unhappiness of this good woman. She weeps for the little bit of lead. It should have struck a heart instead of a shoulder.”

“Ah, señora!” lamented Valencia, “weep like a woman over sorrows. It is a better way than to mock.”

“God knows it is not for me to mock!” breathed the soft voice bitterly. “And if the señor will lend you his aid, I will again be in his debt.”

Without further words Kit approached, and Valencia drew the cover from the shoulder and indicated where the ball could be felt.

“I cannot hold the shoulder and press the flesh there without making much pain, too much,” stated Valencia, “but it must come out, or there will be trouble.”

“Sure there will,” asserted Kit, “and if you or Tula will hold the arm, and Doña Jocasta will pardon me–”

He took the white shoulder in his two hands and gently traced the direction of the bullet. It had struck in the back and slanted along the shoulder blade. It was evidently fired from a distance and little force left. Marto had been much nearer the pursuer, and his was a clean cut wound through the upper arm.

The girl turned chalky white as he began slowly to press the bullet backward along its trail, but she uttered no sound, only a deep intake of breath that was half a sob, and the cold moisture of sickening pain stood in beads on her face.

All of the little barriers with a stranger were forgotten, and the shielding scarf fell away from her face and bosom, and even with the shadowed emerald eyes closed, Kit Rhodes thought her the most perfect thing in beauty he had ever seen.

He hated himself for the pain he was forcing on her as he steadily followed the bullet upward and upward until it lay in his hand.

She did not faint, as he feared she might, but fell back in the chair, while Valencia busied herself with the ointment and bandage, and Tula, at a word from Kit, poured her a cup of wine.

“Drink,” he said, “if only a little, señora. Your strength has served you well, but it needs help now.”

She swallowed a little of the wine, and drew the scarf about her, and after a little opened her eyes and looked at him. He smiled at her approvingly, and offered her the bullet.

“It may be you will want it to go on some shrine to a patron saint, señora,” he suggested, but she did not take it, only looked at him steadily with those wonderful eyes, green with black lashes, shining out of her marble Madonna-like face.

“My patron saint traveled the trail with you, Señor Americano, and the bullet is witness. Let me see it.”

He gave it into her open hand where she balanced it thoughtfully.

“So near the mark, yet went aside,” she murmured. “Could that mean there is yet any use left in the world for me?”

“Beauty has its own use in the world, señora; that is why rose gardens are planted.”

“True, señor, though I belong no more to the gardens;–no, not to gardens, but to the desert. Neither have I place nor power today, and I may never have, but I give back to you this witness of your great favor. If a day comes when I, Jocasta, can give favor in return, bring or send this witness of the ride tonight. I will redeem it.”

“The favor is to me, and calls for no redemption,” said Kit awkward at the regal poise of her, and enchanted by the languorous glance and movement of her. Even the reaching out of her hand made him think of Tula’s words, ‘a humming bird,’ if one could imagine such a jewel-winged thing weighted down with black folds of mourning.

“A caged humming bird with broken wings!” and that memory brought another thought, and he fumbled the bullet, and gave the first steady look into those emerald, side-glancing eyes.

“But–there is a compact I should appreciate if Doña Jocasta will do me the favor,–and it is that she sets value on the life that is now her very own, and, that she forgets not to cherish it.”

“Ah-h!” She looked up at him piteously a moment, and then the long lashes hid her eyes, and her head was bent low. “Sinful and without shame have I been! and they have told you of the knife I tried to use–here!”