ectedly
appeared at the door, his father had leaped for the revolver hanging
in its holster on the wall.

On catching a second view of the chance visitor he had exclaimed, "Not
Burkhardt after all!" With which he burst into a wild laugh, the
shrill mirthless laugh of a man suddenly freed of a terrible fear.
However, as he returned the gun-belt to its place, his hand shook so
that he pawed all around the nail on which it was accustomed to hang.

Steele Weir would never forget that moment of panic, his father's
spring to the wall and following laugh--the only laugh he had
heard from those lips; and though but twelve years old at the time
he could not misread the episode. On another occasion he found his
father kneeling at the grave under the giant pine beyond the
cabin--the grave of the gentle mother of whom Steele had but dim
recollections--and his father's hands were clasped, his head bowed.
With an infinite yearning he had longed to creep forward and
comfort him by his presence, by a clasp of the hand, but the
recollection of his father's habitual chill reserve daunted him and
he stole away.

On his own life the mystery had left its gloomy impress. A solitary
and joyless boyhood, overhung by he knew not what danger, haunted by a
parent's lurking fear and anguish, had made him a silent, cold, ever
watchful man, never entirely free from the expectation that his
father's sealed past at some instant would open and confront him with
the terrible facts. For that reason he felt that the success he had
gained as an engineer, a success won by relentless toil and solid
ability, rested on a quicksand. For that cause he had welcomed
engineering projects full of danger and by his indifference to that
danger gained his name "Cold Steel."

Now on this day with his father he once again put the question he
always asked on his visits, and with no more hope of a consenting
reply than before.

"I must be going to-morrow. Won't you come along with me this time,
father? I want you to live with me, so that I can look after you and
be with you. We can fix up a good cabin at the engineering camp.
You're not so strong as you were; you could fall sick here and die and
never a person know it. I doubt if you spend, making yourself
comfortable, one dollar in ten of the money I send you. You would be
interested in the building of this big irrigation project I'm to
direct."

His father appeared to shudder.

"No, no," he muttered. "I've liv