“Talking about it doesn’t help.” Dalton spoke like a man bored with a worn-out topic. “You are going to wait until tomorrow for your—justice? I have some letters I want to write for Virginia to carry with her; I have some instructions to leave her; I have a good deal to do. For, somehow—” he looked up with a strange smile upon the tightened lips—“I imagine that you are going to come out of this alive, and I’m going to come out of it—dead! You’ll wait until tomorrow?”
“I’ll wait.”
Farley got to his feet. Dalton rose with him.
“You’ll sleep here tonight?”
“No. I’ll sleep outside—not far away,” meaningly.
“Oh, I won’t run away,” laughed Dalton. “Good night!”
Farley made no answer as he backed to the door and stepped swiftly outside. He closed the door behind him, and strode rapidly away into the darkness. Of no mind to sleep, he built a little fire of dead twigs and pine-cones, and sitting upon a fallen log stared into the flames moodily.
He had sat there, motionless, for five minutes when something impelled him to look up. Standing a few feet from him, just without the circle of his firelight, was Virginia Dalton. He rose quickly, took a step forward and stopped. He did not at once speak, waiting for her.
“So you have come back?” she said gently. “I have missed you.”