"I reckon your heart's tender, too!" he presently said. Ware's
dull glance shifted to Fentress, but the colonel's cold and
impassive exterior forbade the thought that his sympathy had been
roused.

"It isn't that," Ware muttered, moistening his lips. He felt the
utter futility of opposition. "I am for letting things rest just
where they are," again his voice slid into a husky whisper.
"You'll be running all our heads into a halter, the first thing
you know--and this isn't any place to talk over such matters,
there are too many people about."

"There's only Bess and the old woman busy outside," said Murrell.

"What's to hinder them from sticking an ear to a chink in the
logs?"

"Go on, and finish what you've got to say, and get it off your
mind," said Murrell.

"Well, then, I want to tell you that I consider you didn't regard
me at all in the way you managed that business at the church! If
I had known what was due to happen there, do you think I'd have
gone near the place? But you let me go! I met you on the road
and you told me you'd learned Norton had been to see Bowen, you
told me that much, but you didn't tell me near all you might!"
Ware was bitter and resentful; again he felt the sweat of a
mortal terror drip from him.

"It was the best thing for you that it happened the way it did,"