match and was approaching the small flame to the pile of
inflammables when Haw-Haw Langley cried softly: "Hark, Mac!"

The big man instantly extinguished the match. For a moment they could
distinguish nothing, but then they heard the sharp, high chorus of the
wild geese flying north. Haw-Haw Langley snickered apologetically.

"That was what I heard a minute ago!" he said. "And it sounded like
voices comin'."

A snarl of contempt from Mac Strann; then he scratched another match and
at once the flame licked up the side of the hay and cast a long arm up
the wooden wall.

"Out of this quick!" commanded Mac Strann, and they started hastily down
the barn towards the door. The fire behind them, after the puff of flame
from the hay, had died away to a ghastly and irregular glow with the
crackle of the slowly catching wood. It gave small light to guide them;
only enough, indeed, to deceive the eye. The posts of the stalls grew
into vast, shadowy images; the irregularities of the floor became high
places and pits alternately. But when they were half way to the door
Haw-Haw Langley saw a form too grim to be a shadow, blocking their path.
It was merely a blacker shape among the shades, but Haw-Haw was aware of
the two shining eyes, and stopped short in his tracks.

"The wolf!" he whispered to Mac Strann. "Mac, what're we goin' to do?"

The other had not time to answer, for the shadow at the door of the
barn now leaped towards them, silently, without growl or yelp or snarl.
As if to guide the battle, the kindling wood behind them now ignited and
sent up a yellow burst of light. By it Haw-Haw Langley saw the great
beast clearly, and he leaped back behind the sheltering form of Mac
Strann. As for Mac, he did not move or flinch from the attack. His
revolver was in his hand, levelled, and following the swift course of
Black Bart.

CHAPTER XXII

PATIENCE

There is one patience greater than the endurance of the cat at the hole
of the mouse or the wolf which waits for the moose to drop, and that is
the patience of the thinking man; the measure of the Hindoo's moveless
contemplation of Nirvana is not in hours but in weeks or even in months.
Randall Byrne sat at his sentinel post with his hands folded and his
grave eyes steadily fixed before him, and for hour after hour he did not
move. Though the wind rose, now and again, and whistled through the
upper chambers or mourned down the empty halls, Randall Byrne did not
stir