"I—I didn't know—in this light," he stammered. "If—if I had known——" He seemed for the moment more agitated than she. She stood stunned, silent, gazing at him as if in a dream. "I won't intrude on you, Barbara," he said, in a low, unsteady voice. "I didn't know you lived here. It isn't to you that I should have come."
"Oliver!" she exclaimed suddenly, waking up as he made a movement to turn away. "Stay! Did you ask for food and shelter?"
"I ask nothing from you," he replied, painfully.
"Come in," she said, firmly, no longer faltering or tremulous, but with an almost imperious gesture motioning him to enter. "You are tired?" as she noticed his stiff and dragging step. "Sit down while I get a light." She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had some accident," she said, with a scrutinizing but not ungentle glance.
"Only a scratch," he answered, in a mechanical way, as if thinking of something else. "But my coat was nearly torn off my back scrambling through the chaparral yonder." He had not taken the chair she pointed out to him, but stood—leaning with the heaviness of fatigue against the shelf that served as a table—looking at her in the lamp-light. She saw how pale and haggard and half-famished-looking he was, and turned promptly to set out the supper.
"Wait, Barbara," he said, abruptly, and evidently with an effort. "Don't be doing anything for me till you know what you're doing. Those d—— hounds of the Vigilance Committee are after me; they're on my track now. They'll string me up to the nearest tree if they catch me; it's my life that's in your hands at this minute. I know too well I don't deserve of you that you should save it. And on the whole, Barbara," he added, with a touch of the light and half-mocking coolness she remembered of old, yet with more of bitterness now, "I don't know that it's worth saving."
"HAGGARD AND HALF FAMISHED."
Barbara turned even paler than she had been as she listened to his words. "What is it you have done?" she asked.
"Oh, I've not killed anyone. Better for me if I had! One may shoot a man, but to take a horse is a hanging matter here."