The dusk was deepening about them. She could scarcely discern the expression of his face, but she could see that it shone with thick drops of moisture that had sprung from every pore; he was in a cold sweat of excitement; his hand trembled as he held the weapon. There was a moment of intense suspense; the low rune of the river sounded its rhythmic measures through the solitude; the mighty forests did not stir, save once there came that strange, long-drawn breath, the sylvan sigh of the dreaming woods. A bat on noiseless wing went by with its sudden, shrill, mouse-like cry, as it almost brushed against the two still, silent figures; the star dropped down out of sight. Then she heard the metallic click once and again as the hammer of the pistol was drawn to full cock.
"Say yer pray'rs, gal," he hissed. "Before Gawd, ye hev goaded me ter this! Say yer pray'rs!"
She saw the weapon flash in his hand; there hardly seemed so much reserve of light in all the landscape, with the blurred sheen of the river, and the cloister pallor of the pure, aloof sky, and the deep glooms of the encompassing woods. "Say yer pray'rs," he growled again.
She could hardly imagine such terror as possessed her; her heart had dissolved; her hands, her feet were numb; her brain seemed as if paralysed; the roof of her mouth was dry and her stiff tongue clove to it; to her it was as if other lips framed the words, but she noted the thick falter of the voice when she said in tones near to tears:
"God will purtect me, 'thout waitin' ter be asked. The spar's don't pray, an' he heeds thar fall. But 'tain't the time fur prar'r now, nor murder, nuther. Ye dassent shoot me, Eujeemes Binley—it's too nigh the camp on one side, an the town on t'other. The crack of your pistol would help my blood to cry from the yearth till the neighbours, ez would roam the woods this night, would git ye fast an' sure by the scruff of yer neck. Hurt me, ef you dare! Ever'body would know who done the deed—an' why!"
The words seemed inspired, so definitely they broke the power of the threat. She was not helpless; she was not alone. That infinitely potent and turbulent force, the rage of a roused community, that she had prefigured as her avenger, terrified him as no other possibility might. He had skulked from the deliberate law, and from the busy officers, charged with its many behests, but he could never evade the neighbours, when every man was ready to usurp the functions of justice and the appointed minister of vengeance in the feuds of the community. He began to realise his precipitancy; the noose was drawing about his own neck. He regretted infinitely his outbreak; his ill-considered, intemperate threats against Lloyd; could he not have worked his will without even revealing his presence here? The man could have been shot in a crowd as if by accident, presumably by some silly, drunken lout among the spectators, or even by the accidental discharge of a weapon, he argued within himself. His alibi could have been easy to prove by the Pinnotts, themselves, if indeed his agency could have been suspected, for they had left him in the cave in the mountain, afraid, because of his previous troubles, to come to the Fair. Some less obvious fate might have been devised for the interloper—something that would better perplex and disconcert investigation. He had relied too implicity on his hold on this girl's heart; he had loved her with too confiding a devotion. But since he had lost her—yet perchance with this inter-meddler out of the way she might turn anew to him, as of yore—he would not sacrifice himself gratuitously.
He suddenly broke into a hollow, raucous peal of laughter, so at variance with his look, his attitude, his threats, that the girl nervously set both hands against her ears to shut out the sinister dissonance.
"Lawk-a-day, Clotildy," he mocked at her, "yer head is in an' about turned with yer play-actin', an' song an' dance, an' stunts, an' sech. I'm jes' a-funnin', seein' ez how I kin play-act, an' do stunts, an' sech, too. Toler'ble well, I reckon, seein' ez ye thunk the demonstration war genuyine. I wouldn't git myself tangled up in a snarl with shootin' that thar showman fur ten dozen sech flimsy leetle cattle ez you uns. An' I wouldn't harm a hair o' yer head fur a whole county o' sech ez him. Ye hev got a right ter a ch'ice 'mongst men. Make it ter suit yerse'f. Gawd knows I don't want no gal ez ain't powerful glad ter git me. I kem ter the Fair kase I war so dad-burned lonesome in the mountings, an' I war sure ez nobody would know me in this hyar rig—all the old clothes I could find in yer dad's roof-room. But you uns 'pear ter be a toler'ble long-headed leetle trick, an' I do b'lieve I be safer 'thout the pistol, like ye say, than with it. Hyar, take it—take it—ef ye want it! Wait—it's full cocked." His face changed visibly, even in the dusk, at this evidence of the deadliness of his pretended jocosity. "Thar now, it's half cocked. But handle it keer-ful, an' keep it out o' sight. Ef enny war ter ask ye whar ye got it 'pears like 'twould be a toler'ble awkward lie ye would hev ter tell!"
The revulsion of feeling, her astonishment at this sudden change, the amazing transition from mortal terror to the assurance of safety, so overwhelmed her faculties that for a moment in the reaction she was not far from fainting. She seemed more overwrought than in the instant of the immediate expectation of death. She leaned back against the bole of the great beech tree above her head; she was glad to brace her feet against the projecting roots; her face was white in the dusk; she could even feel the cold as the chill quivers ran over it. Yet never did she lose the grasp upon the pistol. She felt as if she had the whole earth in her hands, so dominant was her sense of power. Not for a moment did she credit her scheming lover's protest of innocent intention—he had meant to slyly, treacherously kill the man, and now it was impossible. He could not with his bare hands slay the stalwart athlete; he could not buy a weapon, he had neither the money, nor the courage to dare the suspicion this might provoke; he could not borrow it, for who would trust aught of value to so irresponsible an old vagrant as he seemed. Lloyd was safe, and she felt a sudden revivifying joy in the fact that it was she who had saved him.
There is no more invincible persuasion in the mind of a man than the overestimate of his hold on a woman's affection. With Lloyd out of the way, Binley argued, she would soon forget the showman, and her old lover would easily find his place anew.