, and sent
him off with a paw uplifted in pain.

The man leaned out from his shelter and stared towards the right,
whence the lights were coming. Then he looked straight ahead for a
moment, down the mountain, under the leafy tops, and wished it were all
over and he knew how it had come out.

When he looked back the foremost men were in view, a group of three or
four, with their dogs following at heel soberly enough. Their torches
flung grotesque shadows on the trees, and distorted their figures into
uncouth semblances. He could not recognize them, yet they seemed
familiar. Those two in front--was it----? Yes, by God! Like a fiend he
sprang from his lair and rushed at von Rittenheim, as if from the very
bowels of the rock. His face glared, malignant, in the unsteady light.

"So you did squeal on me, you damned German!" he yelled. "Take that and
that and that." He fired three times full at von Rittenheim's face.
With the third shot another rang in unison, and Pressley fell, twisted
and snarling, on the stone before his still.

Bob Morgan's hand, holding the smoking pistol, fell to his side.

"Are you all right, von Rittenheim?" he asked; then added, weakly, "I
reckon you'll have to carry me down, boys. He's touched me." And he
staggered into Friedrich's arms.

He had been walking a stride higher up the hill-side than von
Rittenheim, and, flinging himself from his greater elevation between
the German and his assailant, he had received the bullets meant for
Friedrich's head lower in his own body.

XXIV

"Fought the Fight"

Bob lay white and still upon his bed, breathing painfully. Two of
Pink's bullets had torn their way through his lungs, and the third had
splintered his collar-bone. A surgeon had come out from Asheville, and,
after examining the wounds, had sent for help. When the second
physician arrived, they had probed and prodded the inert body, while
Dr. Morgan, with an ever-growing fear clutching at his heart,
administered the chloroform with a steady hand. Outside the door Mrs.
Morgan had knelt against the wall, tearless, and without a word of
prayer.

Now it was over, and there was no hope, only waiting for the end,--the
waiting that saps courage from the heart of the onlooker, and makes
endurance seem a thing impossible; the torture of seeing suffering that
is not to be relieved; suffering that seems all unnecessary, since
death is to be the issue after all.

Bob had asked for Sydney as soo