thought he did not know, nor trouble to adjust. There was a great stillness over the grassy-valley, a growing fear in his breast. Could he justify the killing of that man to authority when it came to inquire? Could he justify it to himself?
There was a sickening feeling of revulsion for the whole unfortunate adventure. The pitiful things which he had there to defend were not worth the life of any man, were not worth the upbraidings of conscience, the years of regret this morning's hot-headed work would cost. It had taken this tragedy to adjust his sense of values. Before the fight he had believed his position unassailable by the most exacting moralist among mankind. Now it looked as if the whole project had been founded on a wrong conception. What was the homestead worth to him, now he had shed blood to defend it? How far would public opinion in that one-man country support him in his defence?
It was a troublesome thing, an appalling thing, to rise up and confront a man. He had reasoned, in a feeling of security—false security, specious reasoning, he feared—that the United States Government would stand behind him in the defence of his rights. Would it do so? What was the United States Government but an oligarchy of influence? The isolated individual, especially in a strange place, had no claim of kinship that he could enforce if the influential were bent on his destruction.
Rawlins withdrew a distance from the trampled scene of his dooryard, and sat down on a little rise behind the house. He was beginning to sweat and palpitate in the heat of doubt and fear that his dis-
