"
On the morning of the second day after Judkins's recital, during
which time Jane remained indoors a prey to regret and sorrow for
the boy riders, and a new and now strangely insistent fear for
her own person, she again heard what she had missed more than she
dared honestly confess--the soft, jingling step of Lassiter.
Almost overwhelming relief surged through her, a feeling as akin
to joy as any she could have been capable of in those gloomy
hours of shadow, and one that suddenly stunned her with the
significance of what Lassiter had come to mean to her. She had
begged him, for his own sake, to leave Cottonwoods. She might yet
beg that, if her weakening courage permitted her to dare absolute
loneliness and helplessness, but she realized now that if she
were left alone her life would become one long, hideous
nightmare.
When his soft steps clinked into the hall, in answer to her
greeting, and his tall, black-garbed form filled the door, she
felt an inexpressible sense of immediate safety. In his presence
she lost her fear of the dim passageways of Withersteen House and
of every sound. Always it had been that, when he entered the
court or the hall, she had experienced a distinctly sickening but
gradually lessening shock at sight of the huge black guns
swinging at his sides. This time the sickening shock again
visited her, it was, however, because a revealing flash of
thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was
thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons.
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