It was dusk the following evening. Virginia was at the cow-lot when her uncle came lazily up the road from the store and joined her. "Well," he drawled out, as he thrust his hands into his pocket for his pipe, "I reckon I'm onto a piece o' news that you and your mother, nor nobody else this side o' Wilson's shebang, knows about. Mrs. Snodgrass has just arrived by hack from Darley, where she attended the circus and tried to get a job to beat that talking-machine they had in the side-show. It seems that this neighborhood has furnished the material for more excitement over there than the whole exhibition, animals and all."

"How is that, uncle?" Virginia asked, absent-mindedly.

"Why, it seems that a row has been on tap between Langdon Chester and Luke King for, lo, these many months, anyway, and yesterday, when the population of Darley turned out in as full force to meet Luke King as they did the circus parade, why it was too much for Chester's blood. He kept drinking and drinking till he hardly knew which end of him was up, and then he met Luke at the Johnston House face to face. Mrs. Snod says Langdon evidently laid his plans so there would have to be a fight in any case, so he up and slandered that good old mammy of King's."

"Oh, uncle, and they fought?" Virginia, pale and trembling, gasped as she leaned for support on the fence.

"You bet they did. Mrs. Snod says the vile slander had no sooner left Chester's lips than King let drive at him right between the eyes. That knocked Langdon out of the ring for a while, and his friends took him to a room to wash him off, for he was bleeding like a stuck pig. King was to come out here last night, but Mrs. Snod says he was afraid Chester would think he was running from the field, and so he stayed on at the hotel. Then, this morning early, the two of them come together on the street in front of the bank building. Mrs. Snod says Chester drawed first and got Luke covered before he could say Jack Robinson, and then fired. Several shots were exchanged, but the third brought King to his knees. They say he's done for, Virginia. He wasn't dead to-day at twelve, but the doctors said he couldn't live an hour. They say he was bleeding so terrible inside that they was afraid to move him. I'm here to tell you, Virgie, that I used to like that chap; and when he got to coming to see you, and I could see that he meant business, I was in hopes you and him would make a deal, but then you up and bluffed him off so positive that I never could see what it meant. Why, he was about the most promising young man I ever—But look here, child, what's ailing you?"

"Nothing, uncle," Virginia said; and, with her head down, she turned away. Looking after her for a moment in slow wonder, Sam went on into the farm-house, bent on telling the startling news to his sister-in-law. As for Virginia, she walked on through the gathering dusk towards Ann Boyd's house. "Dead, dying!" she said, with a low moan. "It has come at last."

Farther across the meadow she trudged, unconscious of the existence of her physical self. At a little stream which she had to cross on stepping-stones she paused and moaned again. Dead—actually dead! Luke King, the young man whom the whole of his state was praising, had been shot down like a dog. No matter what might be the current report as to the cause of the meeting, young as she was she knew it to be the outcome of Langdon Chester's passion—the fruition of his mad threat to her. Yes, he had made good his word.

Approaching Ann's house, she entered the gate just as Mrs. Boyd came to the door and stood smiling knowingly at her.

"Virginia," she called out, cheerily, "what you reckon I've got here? You could make a million guesses and then be wide of the mark."

"Oh, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia groaned, as she tottered to the step and raised her eyes to the old woman's face, "you haven't heard the news. Luke is dead!"

"Dead?" Ann laughed out impulsively. "Oh no, I reckon not. Come in and take a chair by the fire; you've got your feet wet with the dew."

"He's dead, he's dead, I tell you!" Virginia stood still, her white and rigid face upturned. "Langdon Chester, the contemptible coward, shot him at Darley this morning."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" A knowing look came into Ann Boyd's face. She stroked an impulsive smile from her facile lips, but Virginia still saw its light in the twinkling eyes above the broad, red hand. "You say he's dead? Well, well, that accounts for something I was wondering about just now. You know I am not much of a hand to believe in spiritual manifestations like table-raising folks do, but I'll give you my word, Virginia, that for the last hour and a half I'd 'a' sworn Luke King himself was right here in the house. Just now I heard something like him walking across the floor. It seemed to me he went out to the shelf and took a drink of water. I'll bet it's Luke's spirit hanging about trying to tell me good-bye—that is, if he really was shot, as you say." Ann smiled again and turned her face towards the inside of the room, and called out: "Say, Ghost of Luke King, if you are in my house right now you'd better lie low and listen. This silly girl is talking so wild the first thing you know she will be saying she don't love Langdon Chester."

"Love him? what's the matter with you?" Virginia panted. "I hate him. You know I detest him. I'll kill him. Do you hear me? I'll kill him as sure as I ever meet him face to face."

Ann stared at the girl for a moment, her face oddly beaming, then she looked back into the room again. "Do you hear that, Mr. Ghost? She now says she'll kill Langdon Chester on sight. She says that after sending you about your business for no reason in the world. You listen good. Maybe she'll be saying after a while that she loved you."

"I did love him. God knows I loved him!" Virginia cried. "I loved him with every bit of my soul and body. I've loved him, worshipped him, adored him ever since I was a child and he was so good to me. He was the noblest man that ever lived, and now a dirty, sneaking coward has slipped up on him and shot him down in cold blood. If I ever meet that man, as God is my Judge, I'll—" With a sob that was almost a shriek Virginia sank to the door-step and lay there, quivering convulsively.

A vast change swept over Ann Boyd. Her big face filled with the still blood of deep emotion. She heaved a sigh, and, turning towards the interior of the room, she said, huskily:

"Come on, Luke; don't tease the poor little thing. I wouldn't have carried it so far if I could have got it out of her any other way. She's yours, dear boy—heart, soul, and body."

Hearing these words, Virginia raised her head in wonder, just as Luke King emerged from the house. He bent over her, and tenderly raised her up. He was drawing her closer to him, his fine face aflame with tender passion, when Virginia held him firmly from her.

"Don't! don't!" she said. "If you knew—"

"I've told him everything, Virginia," Ann broke in. "I had to. I couldn't see my dear boy suffering like he was, when—"

"You know—" Virginia began, aghast, "you know—"

"About you and Chester?" King said, with a light laugh. "Yes, I know all about it, and it made me think you the grandest, most self-sacrificing little girl in all the world. So you thought I was dead? That was all gossip. It was only a quarrel that amounted to nothing. I understand, now that he is sober, that Chester is heartily ashamed of himself."

Half an hour afterwards Ann stood at the gate and saw them walking together towards Virginia's home. She watched them till they were lost from her sight in the dusk, then she went back into the house. She stood over the low fire for a moment, then said: "I won't get any supper ready. I couldn't eat a bite. Meat and bread couldn't shove this lump out of my throat. It's pretty, pretty, pretty to see those two together that way. I believe they have got the sort of thing the Almighty really meant love to be. I know I never got that kind, though, as a girl, I dreamt of nothing else—nothing from morning till night but that one thing, and yet here I am this way—this way!"