In it, waking and sleeping, he enshrined the girl who had been willing to give up all other things in the world for him, who had pleaded with him in the last hour of storm down on the edge of civilization that she be given the privilege of accompanying him wherever his fate might lead.

That he was an outlaw had not destroyed her faith in him.

That he had killed a man--a man unfit to live--had only drawn her arms more closely about him, and had made her more completely a part of him.

And a thousand times the maddening thought possessed Jolly Roger--was he wrong, and not right, in refusing to accept the love and companionship which she had begged him to accept, in spite of all that had happened and all that might happen?
Day by day he slowly won for himself, and at last, as they traveled in the direction of Yellow Bird's country, he crushed the final doubt that oppressed him, and knew that he was right.

In his selfishness he had not shackled her to an outlaw.