e road, and, coming back with
it, the light in his eyes, he had made a misstep, and the shaft--the old
Granite Hill shaft, you know--it's close to the road. We found him in
the sump at the bottom. There had been too much rain, but it is a deep
shaft anyway. He kept his hold on the bag, and he kept his senses long
enough to hook it onto a poor little stray pine-root above the water,
where he died. It was a cruel death, but his face was good to look at."

"And the telegram?" I asked.

"It was safe. He'd saved everything, except himself. They were driven
over to Colfax that night, with not a moment to spare----"

"But you haven't told me what it was."

"The message? Yes, it was from her, Constance--sent from an address in
the city. It said--I suppose I may repeat it. It is part of the night's
work.

"'Come to me, mother,' it said. 'I am here. I need you.'"

"And they were in time?"

"To bid her good-by," said Joshua. "There was no hope for her but in
death. Of course, they never explained. She simply fled from--we don't
know what. As long as she could she bore it without complaint, and then
she came home. She had them both with her and she knew them.

"I believe they were willing to give her up. It was the only solution
left. They were very fixed in their ideas about divorce, and what comes
after. They believed in staking all or nothing and abiding the result.
The logic of her choice was death. They saw her free, without a stain,
without an obligation in this life even to her child, for it lay dead
beside her. They did grieve for that. They wanted it to live. It would
have been something--yet, I believe, even that was best.

"They lived on here for a while, if you call it living; but the silence
in these rooms was more than she could endure. And I need not tell you
that the watchman, who was put on after Gideon, had orders to leave that
knocker alone."

"And you think," I asked, "that while Gideon lay dead at the bottom of
the shaft, his knock was 'marching on'?" I regretted instantly the turn
of my last sentence. Joshua stiffened as he replied:

"No; I cannot assert that he was dead, but I am convinced that what was
left of him, of his mortal--or immortal--consciousness, was not
concerned with himself. What may happen to us at that last boundary post
is one of the mysteries no man can solve till he gets there."

"Joshua," I said, "the drift of your conclusion is a tribute to Gideon's
faithfulness--well deser