"I—I saw Pete this morning, no, yesterday. I don't know when," said Ned. "When did you come here, Jenny?"
Jenny said it was long ago. She dried her tears for shame was hot within her. And yet joy was alive within her. She loved Tchorch!
"I couldn't leave Tchorch now," she said to herself, as Ned went on talking. "I'd rather he killed me. Poor Mary!"
If Pete had been brutal, Mary had always been kind. She hated Ned suddenly.
He took another drink and sat crouched over the fire. Every now and again he looked round. At any noise he started. Perhaps the police were trying to look into the house. Jenny could have screamed. It seemed hours since George went away. Ned muttered to the fire.
"Mary, Mary," he said in a low voice. He and Mary had been lovers once, for when she first went to him he was a man, and she was quite beautiful. Across the dark years he saw himself and her: and again he saw her as she lay in blood upon the earthen floor of his shack, what time he had run out and taken his horse for flight.
"They'll hang me," said Ned, choking.
And there were steps outside. He sprang to his feet and hung to the mantel-shelf.
"What's that?" he asked. The next minute they heard George enter the house with some other man.
"It's the police," screamed Ned thinly. He believed George had denounced him. And George put his head inside the room and beckoned to him. Ned ran to him stumbling. The door closed on them and Jenny fell upon her knees. Then she sank in a heap upon the floor. She had fainted.