"Oh!" she cried, "but I—I—it was I who bade him follow you."
Apache Kid's eyes were staring on the floor; and in the agony of my heart, whether well or ill advised I do not know, I said:
"Your name was the last on his lips."
Her face craved all that could be told; and I told her all now, she growing calmer, with bitten lips, as I, feeling for her grief, found the more pain.
Then Apache Kid spoke, and I found a tone in his voice,—I, who had come to know him, being cast beside him in the mountain solitudes,—that made me think he spoke what he did, not because he really did believe it, but because he thought it fit to say.
"It may seem strange," said he, "to hear it from my lips, as though I desired to lighten my own regret, but I think our days are all ordained for us; and when those we love have been ordained to unselfishness, and to gain the crown of unselfishness, which is ever a crown of thorns, we can be but thankful—though at the moment we dare not say this to ourselves."
He looked dumbly at me, pleadingly, I thought. I had an idea that his eyes besought something of me—but I knew not what; and then he turned to her and took her hand ever so fearfully, and said:
"You will remember that we have a charge from him, as my friend has told you; and indeed, it was not necessary that the charge should have been laid on us." He dropped her hand, and looking at me, said: "I believe we both would have considered it a privilege to in some slight way——" he seemed to feel that he was upon the wrong track, and she said:
"Oh! That is nothing. Now that I have heard it all from you it is' not—not so cruel as Charlie's account. I think I must go now, and I have to thank you for being so truthful with me and telling me it all so plainly."
She turned her face aside again and we perceived that she would be alone. So we passed from the room very quietly and saw the sheriff at the end of the corridor beckoning us, and went toward him.