"What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering.
She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood atonement," she said between back-drawn lips.
X
When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It broke from her in a flood.
She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you understand?" she cried. "You—you—you are Folger's son. You are the boy that crept out—under this very tree—to find him dead. All my life Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?"
Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he seemed dazed.
"Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
"You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a rifle barrel? Are you a coward—and a weakling; one of your mother's blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a mountain man—that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality away from you! Haven't you any answer?"
He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean—killing?"