heave of his breast betokened the life that still clung
so tenaciously to him.

He opened his eyes again, to look at Hollister.

"I used to think--dying--was tough," he whispered. "It isn't. Like
going--to sleep--when you're tired--when you're through--for the day."

That was his last word. He went limp suddenly and slid out of
Hollister's grasp. And they let him lie, a dead man beside the dead
woman on the floor. They stood up themselves and stared at the bodies
with that strange incredulity men sometimes feel in the face of sudden
death.

Both Lawanne and Hollister were familiar with death, death by the
sniper's bullet, by machine gun and shell, by bayonet and poison gas.
This was different. It was not war. It was something that touched them
more deeply than any of the killing they had seen in war. The low hum
of foraging bees about the door, the foxglove swaying in summer airs,
the hushed peace of the distant hills and nearer forest,--this was no
background for violence and death. It shocked them, chilled and
depressed them. Hollister felt a new sort of ache creep into his
heart. His eyes stung. And Lawanne suddenly turned away with a choking
sound muffled in his throat.

They went out into the sunlight. Away down the valley a donkey engine
tooted and whirred. High above them an eagle soared, wheeling in great
circles about his aerial business. The river whispered in its channel.
The blue jays scolded harshly among the thickets, and a meadow lark
perched on a black stump near at hand, warbling his throaty song. Life
went on as before.

"What'll we do?" Lawanne said presently. "We've got to do something."

"There's not much we can do, now," Hollister replied. "You go down to
Carr's and tell them to send a man with a gas-boat out to Powell River
with word to the Provincial Police of what has happened. I'll keep
watch until you come back."

In an hour Lawanne returned with two men from the settlement. They
laid the bodies out decently on a bed and left the two men to keep
vigil until sundown, when Hollister and Lawanne would take up that
melancholy watch for the night.

"I wonder," Hollister said to Lawanne, as they walked home, "what'll
become of Bland? Will he give himself up, or will they have to hunt
him?"

"Neither, I think," Lawanne answered slowly. "A man like that is
certainly not himself when he breaks out like that. Bland has the
cultural inheritance of his kind. You could see that he was stupefi