It was difficult to refuse this glorious girl any sacrifice she demanded for the sake of the love so openly avowed.
Sweetly and pityingly she turned to Brandt: "Will not you help me?"
"Lass, if it were for me you were asking my life I'd swear it yours for always, and I'd be a man," he replied with bitterness; "but not to save my soul would I ask anything of him."
The giant passions, hate and jealousy, flamed in his gray eyes.
"If I persuade them to release you, will you go away, leave this country, and never come back?"
"I'll promise that, lass, and honestly," he replied.
She wheeled toward Jonathan, and now the rosy color chased the pallor from her cheeks.
"Jack, do you remember when we parted at my home; when you left on this terrible trail, now ended, thank God! Do you remember what an ordeal that was for me? Must I go through it again?"
Bewitchingly sweet she was then, with the girlish charm of coquetry almost lost in the deeper, stranger power of the woman.
The borderman drew his breath sharply; then he wrapped his long arms closely round her. She, understanding that victory was hers, sank weeping upon his breast. For a moment he bowed his face over her, and when he lifted it the dark and terrible gloom had gone.