"Ross, Ross," cried the girl, "stop! Don't threaten him! He is my father!"
"Oh, my little sunshine--my poor child!" sobbed old Dan, falling on his knees at the bedside. "Can you forgive me? Can you forgive your miserable old father?"
"There, there, pop!" she said, reaching out her thin hand and putting it on his gray hair. "Don't you know I forgive you? It wasn't you; it was the whisky."
"And he gave it to me--he told me where Merriwell had hid it!" said the old actor, glad to shift the responsibility.
"He did it to hurt Merriwell," said Havener, grimly; "but that makes him none the less responsible."
Lillian Bird came in and sat beside the bed, and, as soon as possible, Havener made an excuse to go out. Five minutes later Frank found the stage manager in his room.
"What are you doing?" asked Merry, in surprise.
"Getting ready," was the grim answer, as the man slipped the cartridges into the cylinder.
"Getting ready?" repeated Frank, wonderingly.
"Oh, come, Havener!" he cried, "you can't mean that----"
"Just that!" said Havener, grimly. "I'm going gunning for a man!"
"That is folly, man! You must know what it means!"
"It means that Sargent gets what he deserves!"
"It means that you wreck your own life--that you may be hanged for murder!"
"Oh, what's the odds! My life doesn't amount to anything! The girl is done for. I know it. She'll never recover from this."
"I feel it--I know it! The morphine--she is using it again. It will kill her in the end, if she doesn't die from the treatment she received to-night."
"You don't know. You didn't see the look on that doctor's face. I understood his meaning when he said he could not tell just how bad she was hurt. He knows, but he would not say."
"That she is injured internally--that she will not recover."
"Havener, Havener!" he cried, "you can't be right about this! You must be mistaken! You have imagined what is not true."
The desperate man shook his head gloomily.
"No," he declared, "it is not imagination. I feel it in my heart. I shall not let that whelp get away! His life shall pay for her life! For it was he who murdered her!"
Frank looked into Havener's eyes, and what he saw there made him shudder. It seemed that the man was insane for the time.