He looked at her with his blazing eyes.
"A woman?" he said hoarsely. "She's a fiend—a lying fiend. I have waited to kill her. Now the time has come. Now I can——"
The girl was in front of him, holding both his arms, and looking into his eyes with a fearless glance.
"You shall not," she said, as she struggled to push him back. "You shall not harm her. You are mistaken."
"Let me go. She nigh broke your mother's heart," he answered. "I've waited years. She's not fit to live. She even betrayed McMillan."
"No, no," the blind woman cried; "I did not—I did not! I gave up everything for him. I loved him."
Unnoticed in the excitement they were labouring under, the air had grown thicker with the smoke coming from the line of fires which almost surrounded them to windward. Unnoticed, also, was the figure of a horseman riding furiously up from the opposite direction. He sprang off his horse as he caught sight of them through the rapidly deepening haze of smoke, and, leaping from the ground, he clutched the verandah rail and pulled himself up.
"Quick for the horses! The fire is on you!" he shouted.
The blind woman started to her feet with a piercing shriek.
"His voice!" she cried. "It is him come back from the dead to save me. Willy, Willy, my love, oh, come to me!"