Patsy Kernaghan told his
mythical story in Nolan Doyle's garden, had never housed more repulsive
thoughts than were in Mazarine's heart in this unfortunate hour of his
own making. No single feeling of kindness was in his spirit. He
heard nothing, was conscious of nothing, save his own grim, fantastic
imaginings.

A jealousy and hatred as terrible as ever possessed a man were on him.
An egregious self-will, a dreadful spirit of unholy old age in him, was
turned hatefully upon the youth long since gone from himself--the youth
which, in its wild, innocent ardours, had brought two young people
together, one of them his own captive for years.

The peace of the prairie, the shining, infant moon, the kindly darkness,
were all at variance with the soul of the man, whose only possession
was what money could buy; and what money had bought in the way of human
flesh and blood, beauty and sweet youth he had not been able to hold. To
his mind, what was the good of having riches and power, if you could not
also have love, licence and the loot of the conqueror!

He had wrestled with the Lord in prayer; he had been a class-leader
and a lay-preacher; he had exhorted and denounced; he had pleaded and
proscribed; yet never in all his days of professed religion had a heart
for others really moved Joel Mazarine.

He had given now and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of
mind which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it
for the real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not
emptied itself for others, at any time, or anywhere.

He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of
Sinai. It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of
the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion. It
was some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was
born, pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him
a professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and
money-maker. For such a man there never could be peace.

In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except
his torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the
Cross Trails on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping,
sprang up from the roadside and slip-slopped after his
wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped--catching the thud of the horses'
hoofs, and making its footsteps coincide.

All at once the shadowy figure swung its