“You are right!” he said, gloomily. “You keep me to the work. I do not hate him as you do—but he is an enemy, and I will kill him. Why do I yield to you, and obey you thus? What makes me love you, I wonder!”

Suddenly a second gun roared from beyond Buckland.

“We will talk of that afterward,” said the woman, with flushed cheeks; “think of one thing only now—that he is yonder.”

“Good!” said Darke, “and I hope that in an hour one of us will be dead, I care not which—come, madam—but you must not expose yourself!”

“What am I!”

“All I have left!” he said.

And with a gloomy look he rushed from the house, followed by the gray woman.


XII. — THE BUCKLAND RACES.