It will do no good to talk it over, for this
is final. Therefore, if you are a gentleman, you will not try to
see me again. I return to you by express your ring and the things
you have given me.
"WINNIE LEE."
"I can't understand it!" he gasped, as he recalled her words of the
evening before. "Yet she wrote it. There isn't any doubt whatever of
that. I wish there were, but I know that handwriting too well."
He read it over again and again, as if searching out some other meaning.
It seemed so impossible. Yet there it was. He got up and began to pace
round the room, stopping almost every time he passed the table to take
another look at the letter.
"Thrown over!" he groaned. "And after all we've been to each other! I
allow she couldn't stand up against her father. How in thunder did he
find out that we met last night? Some onery, spying Piute of a servant,
I reckon. Well, I seem to be rounded up now, and Winnie's given me the
branding-iron with her own white hand."
He mopped the sweat from his face.
"I won't accept it! That's whatever! She says that if I'm a gentleman,
I'll not try to see her again. Glad I ain't a gentleman! Glad I'm a
man--and I allow a man is a good deal bigger than a gentleman! I s'pose
a gentleman would sit down and twiddle his fingers, and do nothing.
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