h; the next, the brute's
eyes opened and glittered with dim recognition up towards Dan, and he
licked the hand which supported his head. At Dan's direction, a blanket
was brought, and after Dan had lifted Black Bart upon it, four men
raised the corners of the blanket and carried the burden towards the
house. One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing the light. This was the
sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the
ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.

"A funeral procession," suggested the doctor.

"No," she answered positively. "If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn't
allow any hands save his own to touch the body. No, Black Bart is alive!
Yet, it's impossible."

The word "impossible," however, was gradually dropping from the
vocabulary of Randall Byrne. True, the wolf-dog had seemed dead past
recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising
from their graves. Yet he merely shook his head and said nothing.

"Ah!" she broke in. "Look!"

The procession drew nearer, heading towards the back of the big house,
and now they saw that Dan Barry walked beside the body of Black Bart, a
smile on his lifted face. They disappeared behind the back of the
house.

Byrne heard the girl murmuring, more to herself than to him: "Once he
was like that all the time."

"Like what?" he asked bluntly.

She paused, and then her hand dropped lightly on his arm. He could not
see more than a vague outline of her in the night, only the dull glimmer
of her face as she turned her head, and the faint whiteness of her hand.

"Let's say good-night," she answered, at length. "Our little worlds have
toppled about our heads to-night--all your theories, it seems, and, God
knows, all that I have hoped. Why should we stay here and make ourselves
miserable by talk?"

"But because we have failed," he said steadily, "is that a reason we
should creep off and brood over our failure in silence? No, let's talk
it out, man to man."

"You have a fine courage," said the girl. "But what is there we can
say?"

He answered: "For my part, I am not so miserable as you think. For I
feel as if this night had driven us closer together, you see; and I've
caught a perspective on everything that has happened here."

"Tell me what you know."

"Only what I think I know. It may be painful to hear."

"I'm very used to pain."

"Well, a moment ago, when Barry was walking beside his dog, smilin