me too much for what I've done, because I love you. I can't help anything that's been done any more than I can help being a Harnway or you can help being a Powell. Isn't it time that all the old horrible, tragic episodes of a feud were brushed aside, and the feud itself forgotten? I've no excuses to offer—nothing at all—save that I love you. That I want you! That if I can't have you and your love, I still cry for your friendship. And—see! We are here! We have escaped from the police and we are going to a foreign country far beyond Italy's reach, and”
He flung himself across the intervening space, seized from the piano the ancient golden casket and thrust it into her hands. Her fingers were interlocked, white and hard pressed, but at the touch of the metal they relaxed, yielded, opened and for a moment clutched that cause of feud. She lifted it as if never before she had seen it, stared at it as if fascinated, then slowly looked upward at him as he bent above her, waiting, petitioning. And then the Crusader's Casket fell unheeded to the floor as both her hands went up to him. He caught them and lifted her and she was held close to his breast. Her hands, released, moved swiftly upward until they were around his shoulders where they held closely as if after all their restless, reckless eagerness they had at last found and clung to the greatest possession of all. She felt something against her foot in that moment and impatiently kicked it aside. It was the little casket of gold.
CHAPTER XI.
SPALATO, of that new but ancient country, Jugo-Slavia, is, and since the time when the Romans ruled the world has been, a great old city. Its ancient stone quays have known many ships, from slave-driven galleys to spreading sail, and from sail to steam. Many boats have rubbed their bows against its broad landing steps, and many feet have balanced themselves from boat to shore, but none more eagerly than those which stepped thereon in the early-forenoon hours of the day following the flight of the steam tramp Adventure from Venetian waters. Loungers in front of the long row of ancient buildings facing the aged water front, and loungers who sat beneath the trees, indolently stared at the landing party. First came a gray-haired old man in the unmistakable garb of a Venetian gondolier who growled and held the prow of the boat hard to the water-washed stones. Then came one who helped ashore a quietly smiling, but somewhat embarrassed girl, and then a rugged man, broad shouldered, who said to the two oarsmen, “You can go back aboard, or stay here, whichever suits you best. But be here in a couple of hours from now, to take us off. And if we're not back in a couple of hours, stand by till we come, understand?”
Barton had given his orders. His men, who may have surmised that in the future they were to obey him as master of the tramp Adventure said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and watched the shore party depart.
Any one who walks along the water front of Spalato, bounded on one side by the waters of the Adriatic and on the other by the gray old buildings, knows that there is a certain narrow street leading back toward the hills and that if one follows it there is an ancient church, bent as if its years had told upon its physical uprightness, in whose weather-beaten belfry hang mellow bells.
It was there that the feud of Rocky Crossing, Kentucky, came to an end when a Harnway and a Powell came together as one. They signed that agreement on a somewhat soiled register of marriage wherein many others with strange names had witnessed the greatest of life's compacts.
But it was not until they were again aboard the Adventure whose prow was turned back from the bay and toward the rocky point behind which lay the spreading cement mills, that the feudists stood in the captain's suite alone. There had been some mutual embarrassments, and secret considerations, and much happiness when they entered there together and closed the door. To Captain Jimmy the main cabin looked squalid now, as if despite all its restrained elegance of fitting and thought it was unworthy of its new occupant. To the new occupant it seemed perfect. She reveled in the thought that it was a home afloat of which she was part owner, coming to timid but certain possession. She stood for a moment in silence, surveying it, for it did not yet seem that all this was hers, and that but a night before she had stood there feeling insecure, uncertain, indignant, and afraid of plot. She saw it all with a new understanding, the round of bent windows looking astern over sea and land, the window
