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"A fellow has to take some risk or quit living," he told her

gaily.

"When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?"

"The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating," he

conceded. "I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep

life interesting."

"Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me

and risk it."

And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the

kiss awaiting her.

CHAPTER XII -- EXIT DUNKE

Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion.

Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended

with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a

dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely

to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose

upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed.

"Got onto you, didn't she?"

Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall,

strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by

the throat.