oor with a noise that in the utter stillness, and to their strained
ears, sounded appalling.

"It's the darkness of Tophet," muttered Porringer. "If I could find his
flint and steel; there are pine knots, I know, in the corner--God in
Heaven!"

"What is it? What is the matter?" cried Landless, as he staggered
against him.

"It's his face!" gasped the other. "There upon the table! I put my hand
upon it. It's cold!"

Landless rushed to the fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be
kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment
more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light
throughout the hut, and choking back the pale daylight.

The familiar room with its familiar furnishing of chest and settle and
pallet, of hanging nets and piles of dingy sail, sprung into sight, but
with it sprung into sight something unfamiliar, strange, and dreadful.

It was the body of the mender of nets, flung face upwards across the
rude table, the head hanging over the edge, and the face, which but a
few short hours before had looked upon Landless with such a bright and
patient serenity, blackened and distorted. Upon the throat were dark
marks, the print of ten murderous fingers.

With a bitter cry Landless fell upon his knees beside the table, and
pressed his face against the cold hand flung backwards over the head of
the murdered man. Porringer began to curse. With white lips and burning
eyes he hurled anathemas at the murderer. He cursed him by the powers
of light and darkness, by the earth, the sea, and the air; by all the
plagues of the two Testaments. Landless broke the torrent of his
maledictions.

"Silence!" he said sternly. "_He_ would have forgiven." Presently he
rose from the ground, and taking the body in his arms, placed it upon
the pallet, and reverently composed the limbs. Then he turned to the
fireplace. It was easy to see that the hiding place had been visited.
The spring was broken, and the lid had been struck and jammed into place
by a powerful and hasty hand. Landless wrenched it off. Before him lay
the pistols; but the gold and papers were gone. He turned to the
Muggletonian, standing beside him with staring eyes.

"Listen!" he said. "There was gold here. The wretch whom we passed but
now knew of it--never mind how--and for it he has murdered the only
friend I had on earth. There will come a day when I will avenge him.
There were papers here, lists with the signatures of