the devil should I arrange anything of that sort?”
“Because—I will see her—somewhere and somehow. I will see her alone. Scannell has sacked me from Mains; but I’ll go back—by night if they kick me out by day—if you won’t give me the chance here. You had better give me the chance, Ormond, or—I may do more harm than I have done already.”
The steady grey eyes flashed on Randal’s face; then dropped. It is not right that one man should look on another man’s heart when desperate pain has stripped it naked. Ormond kicked out a broken bolt lying in the dried wash; kicked it again, and it dropped the fifty feet into the creek-bed where a dottrell was piping across the sand-pit to her frightened youngsters.
“Does Miss Scannell wish to see you?” he asked at length.
“I don’t know.”
“Then you want me to do this against Scannell’s express desire, and possibly against hers too?”
“Yes.”
“You are asking a great deal.”
“Yes.”
Ormond hesitated. He acknowledged the pride that cut all explanations; and, very certainly, pity hurt him for the man who could
