"
"It wasn't so incongruous at the time," he answered. "My father had sent
me out to America to superintend a contract. It was the first time I had
ever been away from home, though I was nearly thirty; and all my pent-up
youth rushed out of me at once. It was a harum-scarum fellow, mad with
the joy of life, that made love to her; not the man who went out, nor the
man who came back. It was at San Francisco that I met her. She was
touring the Western States; and I let everything go to the wind and
followed her. It seemed to me that Heaven had opened up to me. I fought
a duel in Colorado with a man who had insulted her. The law didn't run
there in those days; and three of his hired gunmen, as they called them,
held us up that night in the train and gave her the alternative of going
back with them and kissing him or seeing me dead at her feet. I didn't
give her time to answer, nor for them to finish. It seemed a fine death
anyhow, that. And I'd have faced Hell itself for the chance of fighting
for her. Though she told me afterwards that if I'd died she'd have gone
back with them, and killed him.
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