down, down--God! It
was a very dreadful way for a wicked man to die."

And Oscar brushed his hat with his sleeve and looked away at the purple
and gray ridges and their burden of stars.

"Yes, it must have been terrible," said Claiborne.

"But now he can not be left to lie down there on the rocks, though he was
so wicked and died like a beast. I am a bad Catholic, but when I was a
boy I used to serve mass, and it is not well for a man to lie in a wild
place where the buzzards will find him."

"But you can not bring a priest. Great harm would be done if news of this
affair were to get abroad. You understand that what has passed here must
never be known by the outside world. My father and Baron von Marhof have
counseled that, and you may be sure there are reasons why these things
must be kept quiet, or they would seek the law's aid at once."

"Yes; I have been a soldier; but after this little war I shall bury the
dead. In an hour I shall be back to drive the buckboard to Lamar
station."

Claiborne looked at his watch.

"I will go with you," he said.

They started through the wood toward the Port of Missing Men; and
together they found rough niches in the side of the gap, down which they
made their way toilsomely to the boulder-lined stream that laughed and
tumbled foamily at the bottom of the defile. They found the wreckage of
the slender bridge, broken to fragments where the planking had struck the
rocks. It was very quiet in the mountain cleft, and the stars seemed
withdrawn to newer and deeper arches of heaven as they sought in the
debris for the Servian. They kindled a fire of twigs to give light for
their search, and soon found the great body lying quite at the edge of
the torrent, with arms flung out as though to ward off a blow. The face
twisted with terror and the small evil eyes, glassed in death, were not
good to see.

"He was a wicked man, and died in sin. I will dig a grave for him by
these bushes."

When the work was quite done, Oscar took off his hat and knelt down by
the side of the strange grave and bowed his head in silence for a moment.
Then he began to repeat words and phrases of prayers he had known
as a peasant boy in a forest over seas, and his voice rose to a kind of
chant. Such petitions of the Litany of the Saints as he could recall he
uttered, his voice rising mournfully among the rocks.

_"From all evil; from all sin; from Thy wrath; from sudden and unprovided
death, O Lord, deliv