Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/329

 and done, you may press on my lips another kiss. If I am disobedient to my mother's wishes God will forgive me."

The train blew the long deep call for its hundred mile stop and they both rose, he took her hands in his.

"You have promised not to write to me, dear, but I have made no promise. I will write to you as often as I can send you a cheerful message," he said.

"It is so sweet of you!"

"You have the little love-token still?" he asked.

"Yes, in my bosom. I feel it warm and throbbing with your love, and it shall not be taken from me in the grave!"

"That thought will cheer the darkest hours that can come and now, till we meet again, we must say good-bye," he said huskily.

She could make no response. He placed his arms around her, pressed her close to his heart for a moment,—one long wistful kiss, and he was gone.

He rode slowly back to Hambright. The eastern horizon was fringed with the light of dawn when he reached the town. The more he had thought of his position and the way the General had treated him in attempting to settle his fate by a fiat of his own will without a hearing, the more it roused his wrath, and nerved him for the struggle. They were to measure wills in a contest' that on his part had life for its stake.

"I'll give the old warrior the fight of his career!" he muttered as he snapped his square jaw together with the grip of a vise. "My brains, and every power with which nature has endowed me against his will and his money. And for the dastard who has slandered me there will be a reckoning."

He was fighting in the dark but deep down in him he