him as for her life.

"Father!" she cried--"father, help me! Believe me! Tell them I did
it! Tell them it is true! Don't let them hang Burr. Help me to save
him, father! Don't let them! Save him! Oh, you will save him, father?
You will? Tell me, father--tell me, tell me!" Madelon's voice rose
into a wild shriek.

A sudden conviction of his solution of the matter and of his own
astuteness came over David Hautville's primitive masculine
intelligence. His daughter was wellnigh distraught with her lover's
faithlessness and his awful crime and danger. She was to be watched
and guarded lest she make a further spectacle of herself; but treated
softly as might be, for she was naught but a woman, and liable to
mischievous ailments of nerve and brain. David pressed his daughter's
dark head with his hard, tender hand against his shoulder, then
forced her gently away from him.

"It'll be all right," said he, soothingly--"it'll be all right. Don't
you worry."

"Father, you will?"

"I'll fix it all right. Don't you worry."

"Father, you promise?"

"I'll do everything I can. Don't you worry, Madelon. You'd better go
in and get supper now. I'll go along to the house with you and get
the lantern. It's getting too dark to do the work here."