le arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry
explained to them.

A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room.

[Illustration: "IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY
FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"]

"Come away--come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he
did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair.

* * * * *

Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with
Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where
Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.

THE WHISPERER

"And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground,
and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be
as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy
speech shall whisper out of the dust."

The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe, nothing remained
of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the
yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.
Here the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there by
a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and
mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and
intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident,
and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and
endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks
whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that
vitalized the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from
some far resort by eager sportsmen.

That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were houses
here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations. Many of
the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had trees, and
others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity, everywhere the
strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been straining on the
leash.

Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It
could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and
looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the
eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the
reedy lake at one end and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house
half