The Border Legion

"Twenty pounds!" exclaimed Kells, with a strange rapture in his

voice.

"Let me heft it?" asked Pearce, thrillingly.

Joan saw and heard so much, then through a kind of dimness, that she

could not wipe away, her eyes beheld Jim. What was the awful thing

that she interpreted from his face, his mien? Was this a part he was

playing to deceive Kells? The slow-gathering might of her horror

came with the meaning of that gold-belt. Jim had brought back the

gold-belt of the miner Creede. He had, in his passion to remain near

her, to save her in the end, kept his word to Kells and done the

ghastly deed.

Joan reeled and sank back upon the bed, blindly, with darkening

sight and mind.