“Out there,” he said, pointing toward the west, “out beyond the big river, there’s a place where the wilderness sweeps.  Out there the law is that of the old times.  It is far away.”

“How dare you speak in such way to me?” she half whispered, low and tense.  “And you claim manhood!”

“No,” he said, sighing.  “I—­claim nothing.  I deny nothing.  I assert nothing—­except that I’m going to be not your Jailer, but your keeper.  Yes, I’m going to hold you, keep you!  You shall not get away.  Why,” he added, pacing apart for a moment.  “I have no shame left.  I’ve planned very little.  I thought I might even ask you to be a guest at my own plantation.  My place is out on the edge of the world, thirty miles back from the river.  An amanuensis is as reasonable there as on this boat, in the company of a frontier army man.”

“That, then, is your robber castle, I suppose.”

“I rule there, Madam,” he said simply.

“Over thrall and guest?”

“Over all who come there, Madam.”

“I’ve heard of the time,” she went on icily, “when this country was younger, how the seigneurs who held right under the old French kings claimed the law of the high, low and middle justice.  Life, death, honor, all lay in their hands—­in the hands of individuals.  But I thought those times past.  I thought that this river was different from the St. Lawrence.  I thought that this was a republic, and inhabited by men.  I thought the South had gentlemen—­”

“You taunt me, my dear lady, my dear girl.  But be not so sure that times have changed.  Out beyond, there, where we are going, I could put you a mile back from the river, and you would find yourself in a wilderness the most pathless in the world to-day, worse than the St. Lawrence ever knew at any time, more lawless, more beyond the reach of any law.  These lands out here are wild; yes, and they breed wild men.  They have been the home of others besides myself, lawless, restless under any restraint.  If you come to wildernesses, and if you come to the law of the individual, I say we’re only just approaching that sort of thing right now, and here.”

She looked at him, some inarticulate sort of sound in her throat, fully frightened now, seeing how mistaken she had been.  He went on: 

“Out there in the big valleys beyond the river, you would indeed disappear.  No man could guess what had become of you.  You would never be found again.  And without any doubt or question, Madam, if you force me to it, you shall have your answer in that way.  I’m not a boy to be fooled with, to be denied.  I rule out there, over free and thrall.  There’s where you’re going.  Your other jailer told you the truth!”

She looked at him slowly and fully now, the color fading from her face.  Her soul had touched the steel in his own soul.  She knew that, once aroused, this man would hesitate at nothing.  Crowded beyond his limit, there was no measure he would not employ.  Other means must be employed with such a nature as his.  She temporized.