Or would there be a thirteenth grave in the little cemetery on the morrow?

The bell chattered nervously.

She arose and threw ashes on the fire. A weariness was in her bones. She took a gun from the rack and made the rounds of the house, checking the locks of doors and windows.

All was secure. More lithely, like a pantheress, she went from window to window, looking out, her gun ready. Some of the old wine of battle quickened in her blood.

The moon was bright, and the trees stood in great pools of shadow on the grounds. The bushes stood like dark, bulky sentinels.

At last she saw him, a moving shadow against the still shadows, creeping closer to the house. Her gun came up and she took aim, carefully, through the barred window. Her hands were as cold as ice on the gunstock.

For a moment he was still, and she lost him against the shadows. Then he moved again.

Her gun blossomed roaring flame and its stock kicked against her shoulder.

The shadow leaped, became a man as it fled across a path of moonlight. He was young, and he was smiling toward the window. Then he was swallowed up in the deeper shadows.

For a moment she was aghast, unbelieving. She had missed! Then, like a frigid hand clutching her heart, came the realization: deliberately, without conscious volition, she had pulled the gun muzzle aside when she fired.

She leaned against the wall, weak and perspiring. It was true, then. She yearned so deeply for a man, she so feared the age that crept up on her, that the principles of the Constitution no longer held real meaning for her.

She did not seek to fire again. She knelt on the floor by the window and waited, looking listlessly into the embers of the fire across the room. She felt suspended in a nightmare.

She heard the crack as the lock was broken on a window in the rear of the house, and still she did not stir. But her heart began beating faster, a cold beating that did not warm her body. She began to shiver uncontrollably.

She heard the soft, wary footsteps as he came through the house. In the dimness, she saw his bulk come through the parlor door. A black veil passed momentarily before her eyes, and her gun slipped from lax fingers and 

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