t.
Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and the
last of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flash
a glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch.

That silence had lasted so long that when at length the dull voice of
Joe Cumberland broke in, there was a ring of a most prophetic solemnity
about it.

"He ain't come," said the old man. "Dan ain't here."

The others exchanged glances, but the eyes of Kate dropped sadly and
fastened again upon the hearth.

Buck Daniels cleared his throat like an orator.

"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in a
storm like this."

"Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland.

"But he'd think of his hoss----"

"Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracular
voice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!"

"Yes?"

"Is he comin'?"

She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by the
fire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly a
glimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as if
exhausted, against the back of the seat.

"He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voice
cheerful, "and he never busts his promises."

"Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here."

"If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels.

"He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out in
it."

"What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply.

"The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night,
to-night."

"And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously.

"Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch of
irritation.

"Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They's
things that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of
'em!"

The silence fell again.

There was an old clock standing against the wall. It was one of those
tall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished disk
of the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisome
precision. And with every stroke of the seconds there was a faint,
metallic clangor in the clock--a falter like that which comes in the
voice of a very old man. And the sound of this clock took possession of
every silence until it seemed like the voice of a doomsman counting off
the seconds. Ay, everyone in the room, again and again