r head, turn her glance carelessly upon Dan Barry; she
was met by ominously glowing eyes. Anger--at least it was not
indifference.

He rose and stepped in his noiseless way behind her, but he reappeared
instantly on the other side, and reached out his hand to where her
fingers trailed limp from the arm of the chair. There he let them lie,
white and cool, against the darkness of his palm. It was as if he sought
in the hand for the secret of her power over the wolf-dog. She let her
head rest against the back of the chair and watched the nervous and
sinewy hand upon which her own rested. She had seen those hands fixed in
the throat of Black Bart himself, once upon a time. A grim simile came
to her; the tips of her fingers touched the paw of the panther. The
steel-sharp claws were sheathed, but suppose once they were bared, and
clutched. Or she stood touching a switch which might loose, by the
slightest motion, a terrific voltage. What would happen?

Nothing! Presently the hand released her fingers, and Dan Barry stepped
back and stood with folded arms, frowning at the fire. In the weakness
which overcame her, in the grip of the wild excitement, she dared not
stay near him longer. She rose and walked into the dining-room.

"Serve breakfast now, Wung," she commanded, and at once the gong was
struck by the cook.

Before the long vibrations had died away the guests were gathered around
the table, and the noisy marshal was the first to come. He slammed back
a chair and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.

"Mornin', Dan," he said, whetting his knife across the table-cloth, "I
hear you're ridin' this mornin'? Ain't going my way, are you?"

Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table. It was a moment
before he answered.

"I ain't leavin," he said softly, at length, "postponed my trip."

CHAPTER XXXIII

DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH

On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was
cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of
old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for
it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre
daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly.
Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now
as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when
the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and
when their