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It was on his tongue to speak of Katy Cline, but he hesitated: it was not fair to the girl, he thought, though what he had intended was for her good. He felt he had no right to assume that Liddall knew how things were. The occasion slipped by.

But the same matter had been in his mind when, later, he asked, “What is the worst thing that can happen to a man?”

Liddall looked at him long, and then said: “To stand between two fires.”

Pierre smiled: it was an answer after his own heart. Liddall remembered it very well in the future.

“What is the thing to do in such a case?” Pierre asked.

“It is not good to stand still.”

“But what if you are stunned, or do not care?”

“You should care. It is not wise to strain a situation.”

Pierre rose, walked up and down the room once or twice, then stood still, his arms folded, and spoke in a low tone. “Once in the Rockies I was lost. I crept into a cave at night. I knew it was the nest of some wild animal; but I was nearly dead with hunger and fatigue. I fell asleep. When I woke–it was towards morning–I saw two yellow stars glaring where the mouth of the cave had been. They were all hate: like nothing you could imagine: passion as it is first made–yes. There was also a rumbling sound. It was terrible, and yet I was not scared. Hate need not disturb you.–I am a quick shot. I killed that mountain lion, and I ate the haunch of deer I dragged from under her….”

He turned now, and, facing the doorway, looked out upon the village, to the roof of a house which they both knew. “Hate,” he said, “is not the most wonderful thing. I saw a woman look once as though she could lose the whole world–and her own soul. She was a good woman. The man was bad–most: he never could be anything else. A look like that breaks the nerve. It is not amusing. In time the man goes to pieces. But before that comes he is apt to do strange things. Eh-so!”

He sat down, and, with his finger, wrote musingly in the dust upon the table.

Liddall looked keenly at him, and replied more brusquely than he felt: “Do you think it fair to stay–fair to her?”

“What if I should take her with me?” Pierre flashed a keen, searching look after the words.

“It would be useless devilry.”

“Let us drink,” said Pierre, as he came to his feet quickly: “then for the House of Lords” (the new and fashionable tavern).

They separated in the street, and Pierre went to the House of Lords alone. He found a number of men gathered before a paper pasted on a pillar of the veranda. Hearing his own name, he came nearer. A ranch man was reading aloud an article from a newspaper printed two hundred miles away. The article was headed, “A Villainous Plunderer.” It had been written by someone at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable in Pierre’s life it set forth with rude clearness; he was credited with nothing pardonable. In the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable to Pierre. He suddenly came among them, caught a revolver from his pocket, and shot over the reader’s shoulder six times into the pasted strip of newspaper.

The men dropped back. They were not prepared for warlike measures at the moment. Pierre leaned his back against the pillar and waited. His silence and coolness, together with an iron fierceness in his face, held them from instant demonstration against him; but he knew that he must face active peril soon. He pocketed his revolver and went up the hill to the house of Kitty Cline’s mother. It was the first time he had ever been there. At the door he hesitated, but knocked presently, and was admitted by Kitty, who, at sight of him, turned faint with sudden joy, and grasped the lintel to steady herself.