If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the hour!  A hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than the shadows.  She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and dread might be lost.  Love was something beyond the grasp of mind.  Love had confounded Jim Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor from the black depths of a bandit’s heart; it had transformed her from a girl into a woman.  Surely with all its greatness it could not be lost; surely in the end it must triumph over evil.

Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal.  It took no stock of intelligence.  It was a matter of feeling.  And when she gave rein to it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness.  To hope was to think!  Poor Jim!  It was his fool’s paradise.  Just to let her be his wife!  That was the apex of his dream.  Joan divined that he might yield to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony would be greater.  Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so different that she could not but feel joy in his joy.

Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow Joan’s mingled emotions merged into a poignant sense of the pain and suspense and tenderness of the actual moment.

“Joan—­Joan,” came the soft whisper.

She answered, and there was a catch in her breath.

The moving shadow split into two shadows that stole closer, loomed before her.  She could not tell which belonged to Jim till he touched her.  His touch was potent.  It seemed to electrify her.

“Dearest, we’re here—­this is the parson,” said Jim, like a happy boy.  “I—­”

“Ssssh!” whispered Joan.  “Not so loud. ...  Listen!”

Kells was holding a rendezvous with members of his Legion.  Joan even recognized his hard and somber tone, and the sharp voice of Red Pearce, and the drawl of Handy Oliver.

“All right.  I’ll be quiet,” responded Cleve, cautiously.  “Joan, you’re to answer a few questions.”

Then a soft hand touched Joan, and a voice differently keyed from any she had heard on the border addressed her.

“What is your name?” asked the preacher.

Joan told him.

“Can you tell anything about yourself?  This young man is—­is almost violent.  I’m not sure.  Still I want to—­”

“I can’t tell much,” replied Joan, hurriedly.  “I’m an honest girl.  I’m free to—­to marry him.  I—­I love him! ...  Oh, I want to help him.  We—­we are in trouble here.  I daren’t say how.”

“Are you over eighteen?” “Yes, sir.”

“Do your parents object to this young man?”

“I have no parents.  And my uncle, with whom I lived before I was brought to this awful place, he loves Jim.  He always wanted me to marry him.”

“Take his hand, then.”

Joan felt the strong clasp of Jim’s fingers, and that was all which seemed real at the moment.  It seemed so dark and shadowy round these two black forms in front of her window.  She heard a mournful wail of a lone wolf and it intensified the weird dream that bound her.  She heard her shaking, whispered voice repeating the preacher’s words.  She caught a phrase of a low-murmured prayer.  Then one dark form moved silently away.  She was alone with Jim.