I wasn't first in, but
I won that race. There was a shout and a shriek from man and horse, and
then a crash of shattered timber, and when I rode up at a hand-gallop, I
saw on my toasting-fork, stuck with a jagged prong through him, his head
hanging down and his legs flying up, just as he had pitched from his
horse, the man your mother loved."

The venom had come into the voice again, the hatred into the eyes; and
as he uttered the last words, Tony instinctively drew back farther away
from him, his whole nature recoiling in loathing from the cruel, brutal
passion of the man's face.

"That's what you're to tell her; that's my message to her when you find
her--my dying message to the woman who made me mad with love and mad
with hate. And you'll give it to her--you, her stolen boy, and when she
hears it from you, she----"

His voice stopped in a gasp, and for a minute he battled for his breath.

"I don't care now; I'm square at last," he muttered, as soon as he could
speak again; and Tony saw by the red firelight how his face was growing
pallid and drawn. "I was square with the mother years ago and square
with the man she loved, and now I'm square with you; for I've put a
sting in your life that'll last as long as you've breath to draw. I came
back here to find you; and then--I am the man who collared the gold last
time you were here, and I settled your hash with the fair-haired girl
that's out at the station now. You've your father's voice and your
father's face, and if your mother could see you she'd know in a
moment--only she can't, she can't; and you----"

A gasping spasm seized the man, and he battled again for his breath.
Tony sprang across to him, and, stooping down, put his hand under the
man's head and raised it. He breathed more easily, and Tony watched the
face anxiously, for the eyes were closed and the lips drawn away from
the teeth. With his unoccupied hand Tony put back the shaggy mass of
hair from the forehead, and, as he felt the touch, the man opened his
eyes and stared vindictively at the face above him.

"You thought I'd gone--did you?" he said, in little more than a whisper.
"Don't touch me--you spawn of----"

A spasm of pain contracted his features and stopped his words.

"Don't talk like that. Keep quiet. I only want to do what I can to ease
you," Tony said gently.

The man, even as he struggled for breath, raised one arm and tried to
push Tony away, until, fearing that his efforts to sooth